Literature Review 2/4

Chrissie Calvert

Literature Review 1/4

MFA Part 3, 2023

Chromophobia

Author: David Batchelor

The book Chromophobia by David Batchelor explores the phenomenon of what he calls Chromophobia, which he defines as the fear of contamination through colour. He argues that the feminine, the oriental and the infantile are all associated with colour in the West, which relagates them to the category of the superficial. Batchelor analyses the occurrence of chomophobia in Western history through its artists, philosophers and authors.

Whitescapes

In Chapter One Batchelor introduces us to one of the most obvious instances of chromophobia apparent in modern times: minimalist architecture. Specifically the minimalist architecture of an art critic’s immodest abode he visited at a party in the 90’s. Of the interior: “This was assertive silence, emphatic blankness, the kind of ostentatious emptiness that only the very wealthy can afford.” Batchelor argues that Minimalism has been carelessly associated with white. He reasons that in reality minimalism was not always so overrun by a concept of ‘pure’ white. He uses Carl Andre and Donald Judd as examples of artists involved with the Minimalist movement in the 60’s who incorporate colour in their works. Be that the organic colour found in Andre’s work or the bright colours found within Judd’s sculptures. He argues, “In truth, the colours of Minimal art were often far closer to that of its exact contemporary Pop art than anything else” He expounds upon this idea by pointing out that white was seen as a colour among many in early minimalism, instead of an opposition to colour. This leads to an explanation that it is the generalisation of white that is the problem. “Pure white: this is certainly a western problem...” Whiteness, he says, has been woven into the fabric of western culture, at least since Biblical times. From the Bible: ‘Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.’ But as shown by Henri Michaux, it can indeed be possible to escape the doctrine of White = Pure with the help of psychedelics like Mescaline. “White in bursts of white. God of ‘white’. No, not a god, a howler monkey... I have a feeling that for a long time to come white is going to have something excessive for me.”

Chromophobia

Batchelor’s experience with the “inside-out interior of a colourless whiteness...” led him to question why it was so important to exclude colour so forcefully if it was indeed so unimportant. He calls the interior of that art critic’s house seemingly ambitious. Ambitious in the way it wanted to ‘rescue culture and lead it to salvation’. In this chapter Batchelor solidifies his argument; “It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say that, in the West, since antiquity, colour has been systematically marginalised, reviled, diminished and degraded.” He blames generations of artists, critics and art historians for the vitality of chromophobic tendencies. Through association with the foreign, the infantile and feminine, colour has been marginalised. It is either feared through its association with the queer, vulgar or the pathological; or it is relegated to the camp of the inessential or supplementary through its association with cosmetics and decoration. He provides an example of this in a historical context with a quote from Charles Blanc, a French art critic and colour theorist, “...but design must maintain its preponderance over colour. Otherwise painting speeds to its ruin: it will fall through colour just as mankind fell through Eve.” This is, according to Batchelor, evidence of historic chromophobia. Civilisation according to Blanc has arisen from colour into the sublime. Authors and artists through time elude a fall into colour as equal to a fall from grace. Examples are provided of the connection between bright colours and drugs. From Roland Barthes, a French semiotician, “Colour... is a kind of bliss... like closing an eyelid, a tiny fainting spell.” From Aldous Huxley’s Doors of perception, “...with brighter colours, a profounder significance.” Batchelor provides example after example of instances where colour is equal to a fall from grace in the eyes of western thinkers. He ends this chapter with his understanding of Blanc’s desire to make colour ‘safe’; “No longer intoxication, narcotic or organismic, colour is learned, ordered, subordinated and tamed. Broken.”

Apocalypstick

Batchelor refines his proposed connection between the fall into colour and western society’s phobia of falling into barbarism. Modern society highly values order and reason. Order and reason are associated with the transparent. The transparent is opposite to the opaque. The opaque, the hidden, is often covered with something, like make-up. Make-up could be seen as a kind of lie, a blatant attempt and covering up the truth. Colour is seen as a kind of cosmetic for painting in western thought. This could be, according to Bachelor, a cause of chromophobia. The fear of colour can be found in its connection with make-up, “If surface veils depth, if appearance masks essence, then make-up masks a mask, veils a veil, disguises a disguise. It is not simply a deception; it is a double deception.” From Immanuel Kant, “The colours ... enliven the object for sensation, but make it really worth looking at and beautiful they cannot.” and Jean Ingres, “Colour enhances a painting, but she is only a lady-in-waiting, because all she does is to make more attractive the true perfections of art.”As seen in movies and books such as Flatland, Pleasantville and the Wizard of Oz, colour is the corruption of decency. “Colour is disorder and Liberty; it is a drug, but a drug that can intoxicate, poison or cure.” Batchelor interrogates this fear of societal collapse through indecency brought on by colour, and reveals the flimsy nature of that belief.

Hanunoo

Gems and precious stones are often intertwined with colour. Gems are found and not made, and therefore do not signify skill but instead luckiness. This, according to Batchelor, is a cause of chromophobia in the West. The West is obsessed with progress, and in the West progress is the opposite of the infantile. A child drinks in the shiny, the colourful and the gem-like. Batchelor quotes Faber Birren, “Youngsters are more responsive to colour than to form and will delight in it through sheer pleasure. As they grow older and become less impulsive, as they submit to discipline, colour may lose some of its intrinsic appeal.” Colour as simply a pleasurable thing, colour as something which predates language and society and still defies concise articulation is a cause for concern for a populace intent on progress. From French philosopher Jacquiline Lichtenstein: “it is also the irreducibility of colour, and in particular its irreducibility to language, that marks it out as suspect, deviant and dangerous.” Batchelor believes this doesn’t denote a deficiency of colour, but instead the insufficiency and impotence of language. We often rely heavily on gestures where language falls short. Batchelor expands upon this, “...we reach outside of language with the help of gestures. We point, we sample and show rather than say. And in our pointing, sampling and showing we make comparisons.” According to Batchelor, “To fall out of colour is to run out of words.” He reasons this indescribablity could be due to the fact that colour is so indivisible. Humans can distinguish several million different colours. This being so, English has only eleven general colour names: black, white, red, yellow, green, blue, brown, purple, pink, orange and grey. Issac Newton divided the rainbow of light into seven as he loved musical harmonies, and there are seven distinct notes in a musical scale. This is only one man’s deduction of colour categorisation. Colour can be categorised in many ways. “Colour is natural and colours are culture.Colour is analogical, and colour is digital. Colour is a curve, and colours are points on that curve. Or colour is a wheel, and colours are the infinite and infinitely thin spokes inserted on the wheel.”

Chromophilia

In his final chapter, Batchelor admits his book isn't as he planned. His ideas around colour were meant to be art specific and they have ventured beyond. He says that is because colour is interdisciplinary, despite his discomfort with that word. “The interdisciplinary is often the antidisciplinary made safe. Colour is antidisciplinary.” Batchelor believes something important happened to colour in the 1960’s. Artists like Frank Stella started using paints not made for the explicit use of artists, but instead started using commercial paints. Batchelor: “Perhaps this was the attraction of commercial paints: they seemed to contain the possibility for both the continuation and the cancellation of painting. And perhaps that is why they looked so good in a can.” An escape from the constraints of the artist’s palette, away from the triangulation and hierarchy of colours with their primaries and secondaries and tertiaries; “The colour chart offers an escape from all that. It is in effect, simply a list...” Commercial colours offered a new insight into the potential of colour. Batchelor states that commercial colour is digital colour, in the way it is segmented into discrete units, whereas the artist palette is a continuum, a circle without a beginning or end. The shiny and flat are also a sign of the mechanisation and digitisation of colour. Yves Klien’s International Klein Blue was flat, a deep saturated kind of commercial flat. According to Batchelor, “Colour is excess, but colour in art is also the containment of excess.”

Bachelor challenges modern Western thought around the associated infantility of colour. He expounds upon his ideas by identifying key Western thinkers, artists and writers who contributed or rebelled against this dogma of white = pure.

Bibliography

Batchelor, David. Chromophobia. Reaktion Books, 2000.