page_title: Hilaire Hiler
section_title: Artwork and color theory
hierarchical_section_title: Hilaire Hiler / Artwork and color theory
caption_attribution_description: English: Exhibit in the San Francisco Maritime Museum - San Francisco, California, USA. This figure from Color Harmony and Pigments, by Hilaire Hiler, 1942. It is now in the public domain because it was published in the United States between 1923 and 1963, with its copyright not renewed.
context_page_description: Hilaire Harzberg Hiler was an American artist, psychologist, and color theoretician who worked in Europe and United States during the mid-20th century. At home and abroad, Hiler worked as a muralist, jazz musician, costume and set designer, teacher, and author. He was best known for combining his artistic and psychoanalytical training to formulate an original perspective on color.
context_section_description: After returning to the United States, Hiler was named art director of the bathhouse building at the San Francisco Aquatic Park from 1936-1939, a major WPA project for which the bathhouse building (commonly known as the San Francisco Maritime Museum) was to be the centerpiece. In addition to directing the overall design of the Streamline Moderne building, he created two full-room murals within the Maritime Museum. The first, in the main hall of the museum, recalls a playful, hallucinogenic dip into a richly populated aquatic landscape, and the other elucidates his color theories in the form of a circular, 120-color spectrum on the ceiling. When Henry Miller saw the aquarium-themed mural, he was so impressed that he considered it to be the only mural worth seeing in the United States. He subsequently asked Hiler to tutor him in art, an experience which influenced his novel Black Spring. The scenes depicted in the sub-aqueous painting present a fantastical blend architectural elements and mythical creatures, transporting viewers to the lost cities Mu and Atlantis.
  Hiler's most notable achievements revolved around his study of how color and the human psyche interact. His ceiling mural at the Maritime Museum represents his deduction of 30 sensational—rather than mathematical—color relationships in the form of a wheel, as well as their combinations with black, white, and gray. He titled the room "The Prismatarium", as it was intended to open up the world of color to viewers in the same way that a planetarium opens up the realm of outer space. The Hiler color spectrum varies from the familiar color wheel that developed in the 18th and 19th centuries following Sir Isaac Newton's documentation of the color proportions found in a rainbow. This color wheel presents red, blue, and yellow as the primary colors situated opposite their complementary colors of green, orange, and violet, respectively, and the variations between each color could be endless.
  By contrast, Hiler's spectrum is based on ten color groups: yellow, orange, orange-red, red, purple, blue, turquoise, sea green, green, and leaf green. Each group contains three variations, yielding the 30-step wheel. More steps then this would be indiscernible to the human eye, according to Hiler's "Threshold Theory." This theory also dictates the need for proportionally more gradations from violet to blue, and green to yellow. "Color in painting is a psychological problem, not a problem in physics", he states in his 1942 book Color Harmony and Pigments.   In other words, the human eye and mind are better prepared to perceive differences in the cool colors than in the warm colors, regardless of the proportion of gradations that may be physically present. Adding to each color black to create "tones," white to create "hues," and gray to create "shades," yields 120 colors that provide an outline for "every color in the whole world." Hiler's artwork, including the aquatic mural at the Maritime Museum is directly based on this color foundation.
  Throughout his career, Hiler moved more towards abstract imagery. By the 1940s, his theories on color and abstraction developed into a movement which he termed "Structuralism."
caption: Hiler Color System
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "", "Image Make": "SONY", "Image Model": "DSC-RX100M3", "Image XResolution": "350", "Image YResolution": "350", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "DSC-RX100M3 v1.00", "Image DateTime": "2016:07:23 07:33:06", "Image Artist": "Picasa", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "296", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 51, 48, 48, 0, 0, 2, 0, 2, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "20948", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "3969", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/40", "EXIF FNumber": "14/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "160", "EXIF SensitivityType": "Recommended Exposure Index", "EXIF RecommendedExposureIndex": "160", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2015:05:21 16:51:53", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2015:05:21 16:51:53", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF BrightnessValue": "1791/640", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "95/32", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "1169/100", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "5472", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3648", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "Interoperability RelatedImageWidth": "5472", "Interoperability RelatedImageLength": "3648", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "20800", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "32", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF ImageUniqueID": "0c83df27c2776431ae203abf3be065d6", "EXIF LensSpecification": "[44/5, 257/10, 9/5, 14/5]"}