The prettiest color you'll never see

On discovery, jealousy, machine-made experiences, and earthly teal.

This otherworldly pastel scene is part of the collection at the Musee d’Orsay. Rippl-Ronai was a Hungarian artist, and it wasn’t until I found this piece that I realized I’d seen his work before. Check out this gorgeous arrangement of blues at the Hungarian National Gallery. (Jozsef Rippl-Ronai, A Park at Night, 1892.)

Researchers at UC Berkeley have reportedly discovered a new color, one never before seen by the human eye. Only five humans have witnessed this hue. In order to access it, you need to be on campus, in a lab, with a bite plate in your mouth. “Keep your head as steady as you can,” writes Ross Anderson for The Atlantic. “A laser will be fired into one of your eyes, targeting more than a thousand of your cone cells… The lasers will activate your color vision like nothing in the natural world: A small square of exotic color will appear, just off-center from the focal point of your vision, against a background field of gray.”

This 15th century bowl lives at the Met. It’s called “Bowl.”

This “exotic color” is described by the people who’ve seen it as an “ultra intense teal.” It can’t exist outside a laboratory setting; machines are necessary for the experience.

Salvador Dali, Untitled (After 'The Night' by Michelangelo), 1982

It was named olo, a play on 0 1 0. Those numbers correspond to the types of cone cells that have to be stimulated in order to generate the vision. Researcher James Fong came up with the name, and although he hasn’t seen the color himself, he told The Atlantic that it’s his new favorite—better than all the greens and blues he knows intimately. All those nighttime hues, those teals that reside in the deep shadows of a cityscape, the shallow waters of a tide pool. Hmm.

“John Atkinson Grimshaw's depictions of the docks of Victorian Britain are lyrically beautiful evocations of the industrial era. Grimshaw transcribed the fog and mist so accurately as to capture the chill in the damp air, and the moisture penetrating the heavy clothes of the few figures awake in the misty early morning.”(John Atkinson Grimshaw, Shipping on the Clyde, 1881.)

I’m skeptical of this color, and despite the breathless headlines (or perhaps because of them), I doubt the significance of its discovery. Maybe I’m a little jealous. I can’t see this color, that’s the premise of its existence: you can’t have it. That should make me want it more, but somehow it doesn’t.

I find this scene really moving, though I’m not sure exactly why. I think it’s the dripping wisteria framing the tiny figures, and that little girl in pink, and the off-center imperfect circle… it all just works. (Toshi Yoshida, Half Moon Bridge, 1941)

It’s not quite the same, but the story of olo reminds me of the legend of celadon. The quick version: From the ninth century to the late twentieth century, there existed a color so lovely that only royalty were allowed to view it. Known as “mi se,” which means “mysterious color,” this hidden hue adorned special porcelain. It was rumored to be a shade of teal, a green-ish, gray-ish, blue-ish, yellow-ish color. Some said it was like jade, but given the natural variation of that stone, the descriptor was of little help. It remained shrouded in secrecy until 1987 when archeologists exploring a temple outside of Xi’an opened a chamber of treasures. There, among the ruins, was a collection of mi se ceramics. The cat was out of the bag, the unseen green was finally visible. It was teal, it was celadon, it was sage, it was nice. It was pretty. But it was no longer unbearably beautiful; it no longer shone with that interior sheen.

Teal is shadows, teal is night. Teal is a favorite of the Symbolist painters, who are a favorite of mine. (Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis, Sea at night, 1906)

I’m not exactly claiming that the mind’s eye is more powerful than the two in our sockets, but there is something to be said for beauty imagined. We all know how scary it is when you can’t see the monster on screen in a horror movie, how the mind creates terrors far stranger and more dreadful than CGI ever could. Don’t we do this with beauty as well? (Isn’t that part of the reason that AI graphics feel so hollow—the program promises to deliver our imagination back to us, but instead serves reheated nachos.)

Teal is a humid July night. (William Blake, Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing, c.1786)

What is olo? I can imagine it, and in my head, it shimmers with a beguiling iridescence. Like the northern lights, it’s on the move, a dancing thing, playful and bright. I think it’s lovely, but then again, I think most teals are lovely. They’re my favorite category of color, those mallard hues, the lake dark greens and Atlantic blues.

We’ve all seen this image, but normally we (I) look inside at the lonely figures. This time, I tried focusing my eyes on the window frame, the light that pours onto the street, the shadows in the windows of that red brick building. Instead of going in, I decided to stay outside, with all that teal.

Would I jump at the chance to experience olo? Of course. I’d love to fly to California and bite that strap. I’d keep my head so very still. But since that’s unlikely to happen, I think I’ll settle for celebrating teal—all the shades we already have. They’re pretty great, too.