GoGoRembrandt presents the colors of 1650—as a first impression. The transition from pigment to pixel reveals what is lost in the process—and what is created anew.
Try the } : Colorpicker
Author: ?land Wieland Kloimstein
Date: 2026-04-12
The YouTube video The Invention of Colour sparked the idea in me that it would be interesting to know what colors Rembrandt used back then. I had already built a color picker using Vibecoding. I took that and populated it with the colors from 1650. Not scientifically perfect—but it gives a first impression. I’m actually a UX designer who learned photography. Now I’m experimenting with building quick applications on my own. Vibecoding makes spontaneous experiments possible.
First impressions
I was amazed at how little paint—compared to today—the old master used to create such an explosion of color.
Limitations in the presentation
What we have here are his coordinates. Not Rembrandt’s colors.
One assumption I made: Rembrandt painted in the north light of his studio on the Jodenbreestraat — diffuse daylight, cool and even. A modern screen renders under the same white point (D65, ~6500K). What we see here is actually the light under which he mixed his colors.
But the material behaves in ways far more complex than a single point on a display can convey—the light it refracts, the layer it forms, the time that alters it. Smalte, ground cobalt glass, accelerated drying, and light refracted by its structure. Lead white had a grain that allowed for impasto—paint as a physical mass casting its own shadows. That is not a coordinate. That is a substance.
What the material determines for us—but the color picker doesn’t
In analog art, the materials force the artist to make a choice—because some pigments were very expensive and because a wrong choice cannot be undone. The materials dictate many of the decisions. Rembrandt likely chose to use very expensive paints only as accents. But he created his work out of this limitation—and certainly also in spite of it. The paintings depict the struggle between light and dark. Colors that emerge in the struggle with light.
How Brian Eno solved the problem — and what remains of it
Brian Eno described the problem himself and then came up with a solution. Early synthesizers offered endless possibilities—and musicians were paralyzed. Too much choice, no resistance. Eno’s answer was the Oblique Strategies (1975): cards with arbitrary constraints. “Percussion only.” “Repeat the simplest possible action.” Artificially created resistance as a tool for creativity.
So he didn’t solve the problem—he simply reintroduced the resistance, from the outside, through a rule.
This curse of beautiful arbitrariness is nothing new. Every generation has found its own way to deal with it.
The resistance is just me now
In the digital realm, everything can be undone. Resistance no longer comes from the outside—it must be generated from within: the decision not to change something. Sticking with one version. That’s harder than it sounds, because there’s no external force to help.
Rembrandt was influenced by his medium. The digital medium offers less resistance.
When we were developing this color picker and the original „GoGoGolor“ version, there was a noticeable tendency to fall back on the status quo. From the very beginning, the LLM system showed subtle but effective resistance to creating something truly new.
Rembrandt faced visible limitations with color; today, as a product designer, I face invisible ones due to LLMs.
I bring the judgment and the friction that generative systems cannot replicate.
Try out the GoGoGolor color picker
https://gogogolor.com/
This color picker rethinks color selection from the ground up—in perfect harmony with human perception. Three dimensions. Two points dancing together.