Color as chaos. Color as other: feminine, strange, dangerous. Color as cosmetic, therefore superficial and vulgar. Color as corruption. This is the mindset behind chromophobia. In his book, which defines and takes this term as its title, David Batchelor sets out to present his argument; namely, that Western culture, from nearly its beginning, has held a prejudice against color for all the various reasons listed above. This prejudice has supported the marginalization of color and has left discourse on the subject of color in art lacking. In fact, Batchelor notes on a `color-blindness' not too uncommon in art history, be it in the discourse concerning the work of the architect Le Corbusier or in the over-eagerness to associate of Minimalism with white.
Batchelor is well read and clearly knowledgeable about the topic of color, pulling examples from across literate, philosophy, and popular culture, in addition to art, to illustrate his point. He glides seamlessly from discussing the long-held artistic tradition that values line over color (line is rational, color emotional, chaotic) to commenting on the relationship of narcotics to the intensification of color. While color in this scenario can be blissful and beautiful, it is nonetheless the cause of a Fall from grace, reality, nature...however one may look at it.
Color is the cause of corruption, but there is no way around it. "We are color ourselves," Batchelor gleefully states. This, of course, doesn't stop the attempt of those who fear color to control it. Newton, while not necessarily a chromophobe, designed the color wheel, systematically creating a hierarchy of color that would become the very bases of Western color theory. With a bit more malice perhaps, Le Corbusier and Amédée Ozenfant similarly created a scale to rank color, placing bright hues on the lower end. Our very language for talking about color controls and limits it.
Through these examples and others, Batchelor successfully makes a case for the tendency of Western culture to characterize color as the other or as merely cosmetic. But it's a funny success. In the end, instead of discrediting such chromophobic sentiments, Batchelor confirms them in his celebration of color for its otherness, its superficiality. As the last chapter begins, the author presents a second argument: digital colors bring democracy and autonomy to color, and something changes in the way artists are thinking about the relationship of their work to other media and to the world.
This shift specifically occurs among painters working during the 1960s. Minimalism and Pop Art re-appear in the author's discussion to highlight the use of commercial and industrial paints. Artists such as Yves Kline, Donald Judd, and Andy Warhol work to transcend the "Academic" image of painting, long valued for its uniqueness and exclusivity. Through the use of ready-made colors, reflective and sparkling surfaces, and glowing lights, the medium becomes more modern, more malleable, and more exciting as it teeters dangerously close to the disintegration of painting itself.
Between Batchelor's two arguments, it's difficult to say exactly what his main goal was in writing Chromophobia. If the author set out to write an entertaining history of color in Western culture, he indeed did so. If Batchelor, on the other hand, hoped to fill a significant space it the empty dialogue on color in art, he fell just shy. Aside from an interesting, but brief, detour into 1960s painting, Batchelor offers little more to say on the marginalization of color than to give cheers to color's otherness and ends his book exactly where it begins: in white. While structurally clever, this reader walks away feeling a little disappointed.
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After sitting on this book a while, reading other things and hearing other viewpoints, I have to make an addition to my above review. Perhaps the very contribution Batchelor makes is to simply draw attention to the ever-present ideology of 'the other', which invades even the most immaterial and harmless 'color'. As much as we might hope that this mindset of otherness is fading in today's society, it would be detrimental to think that it has been forgotten.
