on the topic of chromophobia, I love this little book by David Batchelor with the same title press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/b…
> The central argument of Chromophobia is that a chromophobic impulse—a fear of corruption or contamination through color—lurks within much Western cultural and intellectual thought. This is apparent in the many and varied attempts to purge color…
one way to understand the chromophobic impulse is to look at it through binaries of prestige. if you had to associate subdued, pale, or black-white colours with one, and saturated, vibrant, strong colours with the other, between, say, Europe and Asia, which is the subdued one, which is the colourful? what about Black people and white folk?
for each binary you can think of, which one is "colourful"?
- adults vs. children
- straight vs. queer
- masculine vs. feminine
- civilised vs. indigenous
- high-class vs. lowbrow
- citizens vs. immigrants
- residents vs. wandering folk
- …
in basically every single case, the world of strong colours is relegated to whoever is despised in society. the pleasure of colour is too immediate, too sensorial and hedonistic for the sophisticated colonisers. adult civilised life is to be made of white walls, marble statues, beige appliances and pale wooden furniture; those are tasteful; the tasteless enjoyment of colours is relegated to exoticised adventures, a trip to Morocco or to your wive's embrace of silky lingeries, or to the movies to watch children's animation… before you return to the tame, controlled normalcy of desaturated palettes.
(source for the restored Ancient Greek statue below: buntegoetter.liebieghaus.de )
Chromophobia
The central argument of Chromophobia is that a chromophobic impulse - a fear of corruption or contamination through color - lurks within much Western cultural and intellectual thought.University of Chicago Press
James Wells
in reply to Purism • • •