Customer Reviews

Chromophobia (FOCI)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Fascinating and readably well-written argument that western civilization has a long-held prejudice (though not one shared by the author) against color, especially bright color.

Batchelor is highly literate and informed, plus has an impressive knowledge of contemporary art. His suggestion that color tends to be seen as frivolous/minor/feminine/or even evil is backed up with wide-ranging references to culture (contemporary and earlier), art history, lit., and more. (Including an unexpectedly timely observation that historically, evidence of the decadence of Islam included its profusion of color and pattern.)

Just a few other examples:
--the white space as sign of seriousness and quality in the modern gallery or collector's home
--the art historical ranking of disegno as superior to colore
--in French lit, the symbolic association of rich hues and precious materials with decadence
And much more.

As for me, I almost had to buy this book for its hot pink cover alone

I picked up this book from a list of gotta-haves for a class on aesthetics and I gotta say this enormously eccentric work of journalism/philosophy/strange-spooky, kaleidoscopic-microscopic assorted collection (loosely connected?) on art and its psychological reception is worthy of many, many more clauses weighed down with much, much praise.

Anyone with a theoretical interest in aesthetics will find this book packed with gems begging to be peeked at.

A quirky and compelling read. And short too (+).

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.

.........

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.

David Batchelor's Chromophobia wrestles with different notions and perspectives on colour theory stemming from research into literature, science, philosophy and art. He takes a seemingly holistic approach to the subject pulling in various historical accounts ranging from the logic of Plato and Aristotle, crossing paths with Melville and his white whale, Conrad and his dark heart and ending up at the cinema in Pleasantville and of course, The Wizard of Oz and Dorothy's sparkling ruby slippers. Throw in an Andy Warhol Marilyn Monroe and some glitter and it's pretty much icing on the cake, no? It's a bit of an "everything but the kitchen sink" read, which makes its juxtapositions novel and entertaining. But there is another aspect at work in the book, the Western notion of perfection and holiness, righteousness and supremacy of thought and reason, the bleaching of colours to the pure state of white "a kind of white that is not created by bleach but that itself is bleach". Mr. Batchelor is fascinated by the cultural influences that define and shape our collective experiences with colour and it's meaning, just as much as colour itself.

The book is quite organic in a way; it starts with colour as a base but as the research and comparisons progress, approaches otherworldliness, the "everything and nothing of life", all at once. In the beginning of the last chapter the author says "I want to preserve the strangeness of colour; its otherness is what counts, not the commodification of otherness." And this I think is the books power and the author's intent. Regardless of the scientific discoveries made using prisms and colour wheels and diagrams, the religious and rational minds desire to bound, control and tame colour, colour exists on its own terms and bridges all disciplines and perhaps consciousness. "If its object were a furry animal, it would be protected by international law. But its object is, it is said, almost nothing, even though it is at the same time a part of almost everything and exists almost everywhere." Colour is complex and mysterious, non corporeal and yet cosmetic, the path to a fall for Christians and the path to nirvana for a peyote tripping Huxley. "For this colour - intense, heightened, pure, unqualified - offered a glimpse of the `Other World', a world beyond Nature and the Law, a world undimmed by language, concepts, meanings and uses." While Charles Blanc would find Huxley's observations contentious "Colour, then, is the peculiar characteristic of the lower forms of nature..." In his world, colour is something to be subjugated, but still it is a "peculiar" characteristic of nature, beyond his grasp to rationalize.

This book covers a lot of ground, and as such is not intended to focus our conception of colour, but rather to open our minds, and eyes, to colour in ways we may have never imagined. The whitewash opening leading into the stories and anecdotes build and finally arrive in the world of art in the last chapter. And as these stories create connections and points of contact they begin to reach a little further, into that place where the rational mind can't go, into the continuum of colour and energy, life and death, everything and nothing. Regardless of any rhetorical argument, I sensed an author deeply enthralled and fascinated by the mysteries of colour, eager to spread that fascination to all who dare contemplate a fall into colour.

Chromophopia, defined as the fear of color, is an exploration of society's response to color. It is a thorough examination of the meaning that is given to color and its desirable and inevitable opposite: white. When David Bachelor, the author, writes about Color he speaks of the noun itself, all of what we see and not only individual colors. He states that color surrounds us, but in the same thought he realizes that it has been "the object of extreme prejudice in western culture" (p22). This prejudice towards color in our western culture is the core of Batchelor's thesis. Throughout his book he continuously shows, with historical and modern examples, our drive to free ourselves from color and an almost spiritual search for white: the purity of the absence of color.

Batchelor transports the reader on a journey through literature, art and culture to point out examples of society's perception of color. He requires of us to question our biases alongside him. With each chapter Batchelor presents the reader with more questions. For him, it all begins with a spark of inspiration while visiting someone's home. This moment compels him to dig deeper into the meaning of whiteness. He sees this space so intentionally blank and void of color and asks: "if color is unimportant, I began to wonder, why it is so important to exclude it so forcefully?"(p21) Why do we want to rid ourselves of color? He continues "What is it that motivates this fixation of white?"(p12) A white that is more than white, completely purged of color with depth and power. Batchelor claims and proves that this is a western ideal. The whiteness and purity of the western culture clashing with the color of the primitive and untamed colonized land in Heart of Darkness (by Joseph Conrad) illustrates Batchelor's point. He goes even further and offers more questions: Why do we feel corrupted by color? He describes this corruption as a fall from grace, a fall from the western ideal. Like the biblical fall, contaminated by color, we fall into temptation. The modern television show Smallville clearly shows a pure society in black and white slowly invaded by the color of sin as the characters are tempted by pleasure. In the art world, critics and artists (especially modernists) bluntly state that color is secondary to design and drawing. These two concepts are seen as reasonable and pure whereas color is only a fleeting emotional sensation. Moreover, in contemporary art, color is also often an afterthought: Batchelor uses the example of Warhol who applied color on top of his finished prints almost like cosmetics. Finally Batchelor underlines our societies need for control, to tame and contain. But color is something that we sense and often cannot be put into words. Batchelor's says: "to fall into color is to run out of words" (p85).
In the last chapter of his book Batchelor makes a side note about the future of the art world. He extends this symbol of the fall to the history of painting. With time it is also losing its purity, painting is adapting to a changing a world. Batchelor makes the most profound statement summarizing Adorno "[a productive] space in which art walks the line in between exclusivity and extinction" (p102)

To me Chromophobia is, above all, a wealth of information. I was consumed by all the anecdotes, quotes and observations. Batchelor is a great story teller; but beyond that somehow he seems to see connections in between everything imaginable as it relates to color (or its absence -white) and links all of this information together into a thought provoking social statement. His vision is what enables him to take his reader on a journey deep into the mind of humanity. All in all, Chromophobia is an insightful compilation of one man's research and inspiration. This collection of thoughts will undoubtedly and successfully challenge any reader to rethink their worldview.

At face value, Chromophobia is a discussion of both the loathing of color, and the fear of corruption through color as evidenced in western society. Batchelor's most straight forward objective is to expose color as "the object of extreme prejudice in western culture," (22) and to prove that "in the west since antiquity, color has been systematically marginalized, reviled, diminished and degraded" (22) due to its association with "otherness" (i.e.) the feminine, the oriental, the primitive, and the cosmetic. While the association of color with the "other" undoubtedly warrants attention, it is its innate intangibility that proves to be the largest issue tackled in this text. Ultimately, Batchelor wants his audience to reevaluate how it views color, and be open to the possibility that it may deserve much more philosophical attention than it has been awarded thus far.

The degradation of color is supported throughout the text quite nicely by many detailed accounts of the "fall of color". These accounts range from a comprehensive account of the history of Academic Training (touching on color as subordinate to the higher values of the idea), to a detailed analysis of the "Chinese Problem" (referring to the phenomenal abilities of the Chinese colorists and the west's quest to "other" color in order to maintain superiority in the art world). While these stories, along with many others are quite entertaining, and help explain the marginalization of color, one gets the sense that Batchelor has more on his mind.

In chapter 4, Hanunoo, the text becomes quite philosophical as does the question of color, and one begins to feel that this exposé of the philosophical nature of color has become the true objective of this book. Batchelor says, "To fall into color is to run out of words" (85) and this really opens up a most impressive discussion of intangibility as the essence of color. He introduces the language of Hanunoo, where one solitary word such as "red" is not used to describe color for it cannot simultaneously encompass the qualities of lightness vs. darkness, and wetness vs. dryness which are all essential in talking about color. This discussion of Hanunoo, which seems so "foreign" at first, is actually far more on point than anything so far. One begins to understand that, "colors" as we in the west know them are simply products of a grammatical structure that we have been utilizing almost involuntarily since childhood (90). That we only know yellow is yellow because that is what we learned in English class. Batchelor turns everything we know about color upside down, investigating the "unknowable" intricacies associated with it and ultimately suggesting that perhaps all of the color bashing we as a culture have done since antiquity deserves some reconsideration, and in exposing its marginalization Batchelor ignites in his readers an urge to (as Cézanne put it) reconsider color's fall from grace as a sort of fall into grace instead.

In Chromophobia, David Batchelor argues that a lineage of Western philosophers, artists, art historians, and cultural theorists have continued a prejudice against color through definition and use. Batchelor describes the term chromophobia as "a fear of contamination and corruption by something that is unknown or appears unknowable." (22) Through short argument segmented into five chapters, Batchelor supports his objective: a presentation of color as Other and society's inability to subjugate color's innate qualities.

To define his argument Batchelor relies upon the description of whiteness. Through Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Melville's Moby Dick, he finds examples of white as a literary symbol. Most fitting are that of Conrad's deeming of white as the symbol describing "an uncanny sense of coldness, inertia, and death". (13) Batchelor defines Melville's symbol of the white whale as "a monstrous corruption of the great Western idea of the classical body". (17) These examples overshadow loaded references to racism, class struggles, and the exoticism of color--as seen in Conrad's Company map of Africa.

To describe color as Other, Batchelor refers to the story of the Fall in Genesis. He explains how critic's like Charles Blanc deemed color as part of nature, identified with the "feminine" in art. (23) Blanc relates the story of the Fall of Eve to how culture, which is described as the nobility of man, can always be tempted slide back into the always-present nature and non-morality. Blanc's Fall was the Painter, coded as "masculine", unable to subordinate color therefore experiencing "a corruption, a lapse, a Fall". (24) Through the description of color as the feminine Other, he finds other examples such as Des Esseintes description of the woman as a flower--the dichotomous relationship of color bringing life or causing death and disease.(59) Batchelor gives examples of the Other as deemed oriental--such as Huysman's tortoise and Baudelaire's bird. These stories function as cautionary tales of how applied color, even gems from nature, can become detrimental.(58) There is also the Other deemed in gender and homosexuality. Warhol's central figure of the transvestite, who's cosmetic application of colored makeup plays upon the terms of Otherness: "it's aim is to confuse and seduce, to fake and cover up". (63)

Through linguistics Batchelor also explains our affinity to define or to study color. The idea of finding a universal word to describe the area between yellow and green, as in Jarman's coat, is what brings him to color's linguistic descriptors as culturally linked.(89) Batchelor's aim at once creates and destroys all terminology that surrounds color including the color wheel, pushing to a thought that color is able to leave the realms of materiality to enter a sublime state.

While I believe Batchelor presents a compelling and agreeable argument for our contemporary views on color, I think due to the brevity of the book Batchelor often reduces his own argument--often in the lack sources from the Others he so clearly would like to preserve and celebrate. Batchelor's arguments often tiptoe around a thorough discussion of relationship between color, otherness, and racism.

The cover of David Batchelor's Chromophobia sets the tone for a short excavation of color as a subject in culture. Throughout this survey Batchelor collects example after example from literature and media with color as a driving factor. Often color has been treated like a disease and according to many ought to be contained, controlled, and immunized. The cover is a micrograph photo of the hepatitis B virus; high-key and contrasting, relating color as invader, as other.

The fear of color finds itself in the confines of modern architecture, which is sharply designed and materialized to be devoid of color. Batchelor describes it as being so strategically reductive and assertively devoid that the whites on the walls were a `white standing in accusation of color.' In the same way that `white as snow' means pure in the Bible, white has been philosophically set up as pure, untouched on a soap box, saving all from stepping into, as Herman Melville is quoted, `a charnel-house' disguised by all the colors found in nature. White along with form, line, and semiotics have all evolved to control, organize, desaturate, purify and contain color. This fear of, and need to contain color is how Batchelor defines `chromophobia.' Batcher quotes Charles Blanc using an age old anology, `Design must maintain it's preponderance over color...otherwise...it will fall through color just as mankind fell through Eve.'

A polarity is cast between `chromophobia' and, what Batchelor terms as `chromophilia,' which is an embrace of color. Batchelor's most poignant example of `chromophilia' is found in the novel Against Nature. The protagonist of the story, Dos Esiques has an obsessive thirst for color and is often thrust into vividly saturated nightmares that are slowly revealed to be side effects of syphilis. Other examples include the brief color moments in the psychodrama Shock Corridor. Color is only found in the moments when mental patients are fully enveloped into their psychosis. Batchelor cites the movie Pleasantville, which is the best example of the tension between `chromophobia' and `chormophilia.' Set in a black and white Leave-it-to-Beaver style town, color begins to creep in once the townspeople liberate themselves from the model of perfection set by the town. Those who are scared of the color riot against it, others are changed and burst into color. When those in color are fearful to be identified they cover their newly-colored faces with black and white makeup.

Batchelor makes a brief venture into linguistics and how controls the definition on color. When color is subjugated to language color information is often lost or shaped to fit a certain mold.

What could be argued as Chromophobia's flaw is that it jumps around from example to example. However, this is how a survey of color should be: inclusive of the variety of perspectives that color can ignite. Because perspectives are so vast and varied, an insightful collection like this can only unveil your own stance on color and the hidden prejudges or affinities that you might associate with it.

The subject of David Bachelor's Chromophobia is suggested by his choice of title: a word which brings to light a recurring and shared societal paranoia surrounding the mysterious and potentially dangerous world of colour. Citing many literary, scientific and political texts throughout history, Bachelor brings to the forefront an issue that has remained largely absent or underrepresented in the discussion on colour within the realm of the visual arts.
The objective or goal of Bachelor in his text is to trace the arguments for or against colour by highlighting the historical views of important figures in the debate, namely through the use of primary documents from a variety of eras. It is very clear from the beginning that Bachelor has done his research, as he is able to accurately quote and speak towards everyone from Aristotle to Roland Barthes to Isaac Newton. He leaves no related discipline unrepresented: scientists, aestheticians, critics: each has a voice in this often epistemological debate.
Chromophobia, or the fear of colour, is tied to the seemingly 'inherent' Otherization of colour itself, with colour viewed as either as a potently dangerous symbol, or a means of freedom from the 'black and white world' or societal norms and expectations. colour is and has forever been "...the object of extreme prejudice in Western culture" (22), imbued with associations tying the phenomena with the world of "... the feminine, the Oriental, the primitive, the infantile, [and] the vulgar" (22-23) to name a few.

Bachelor also argues that colour, while considered subordinate to line and form and even dangerous in its very nature, was also used by some as a tool of liberation. I especially enjoyed his allusions to the psychedelic research of Aldous Huxley, for whom colour became a means of prying wider the 'doors of perception' (32-34). Tied into this particular observation is the larger thesis that the 1960s were a catalyst and support system for a major change in how the world viewed colour, and how visual artists including Andy Warhol, "the great artist of modern cosmetics" (61) capitalized on this mental shift in paradigm.

I especially enjoyed Bachelor's use of popular film in his arguments. Using films like The Wizard of Oz and Pleasantville to highlight other artists' recognition of colour as a means of 'escape' or 'otherization' made the book seem more modern and culturally relevant. This invited the reader to apply these observations freely to his or her own life and times.

While this book had a major mental and even somewhat spiritual impact on myself as an art appreciator, I can also see this being a great required texts for visual artists in all disciplines. The debate highlighted by Bachelor is one that has been largely 'kept in the shadows.' We discuss colour in our courses and daily lives and may have even been enlightened to major leaps in artistic expressions we have taken since 'the old days' where The Academy ruled all realms of aesthetic expression. It can be argued however, with a wealth of support which Bachelor expertly presents, that we do not discuss the topic in enough depth. We do not highlight the societal norms still in place regarding colour and its associations.

I think Bachelor is successful in proving that colour is still a widely misunderstood aspect of life and art. As a 'modern society', we are still wrestling with associations and questionable binaries which have historical and philosophical roots that can be traced by to Plato and Aristotle. With 'normality' so often "clothed in black and white" (64), it follows that colour should be approached from many directions if a proper and fulfilling debate is going to emerge, questioning our own society as well as societies from the past.

"We have come at colour from many different directions," explains the author. "...we have seen it seep into the world and flood over it; we have seen it rubbed out and covered over; we have seen it kill and be killed and give life and deny death. But whichever way we have come at it, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that colour is a very peculiar other, and that it is almost never less than other" (70).

"If colour is unimportant... why is it so important to exclude it so forcefully?" (21). A good portion of David Batchelor's Chromophobia is spent (almost relentlessly) pointing out ways in which color has been marginalized or stigmatized to advance political agenda in literature, politics, and culture. The book chronicles the history of the purging of color from Western society, aligning the loathing of color with fear (22). These meditations, often unsettlingly poetic and rich in source, are Batchelor's way of exposing color for what it really is - an autonomous, ubiquitous power capable of inciting social and personal change.

Batchelor begins with an exploration of white's role in the repression of color, "There is a kind of white that is not created by bleach but that itself is bleach" (10). The pairing of imagery from the oppressively white home of an un-named art collector with Herman Melville's great Albino Whale and the "deathly, obsessive white that insinuated its way into Joseph Conrad's dark heart," Batchelor conjures unnerving scenarios of a whitewashed world, bringing the sort of tension that will carry through the book to a metaphorical rolling boil.

Batchelor's case that "colour has been the object of extreme prejudice in Western culture" is supported thoroughly in the text with scores of direct references to some of philosophy's most notorious voices, including Aristotle, Charles Blanc, Aldous Huxley, Soren Kierkegaard, and Isaac Newton (22). Charles Blanc's "painting will fall through colour just as mankind fell through Eve," (23) and later, Le Corbusier's, "White is the colour of modern times... our era is one of perfection, purity and certitude," and other similar citations are hard evidence that Batchelor's claim is more than an insecure moment at a cocktail party (46-7).

Despite the ghastly ghosts of color theory, it is Batchelor's unmistakable tendency for play and appetite for the visual that manages to bring Chromophobia full circle. Batchelor's staggered placement of pop imagery and film sequences consistently throughout the writing function as structural placeholders for the space of imagination. Sometime after Dorothy's fall over the rainbow and gazing (albeit second hand) at Des Esseintes's Oriental carpet with "silvery glints running the weft of the wool" (56) we realize that perhaps color is in no real danger at all. Color is, of course, "the other that... can only be imagined away... In literature and the movies, we can picture the world without colour; the rest of the time, in our daily lives and nightly dreams... we are ourselves colour" (70).

We arrive at "pink cheeks and red lips" as they are slowly and gently covered in grey only with the aid of our imagined realities (70). We are able to soak in such moments like hot baths, allowing color to envelop us like steam, analogical and transcending. Batchelor's brief visit with linguistics in "Hanunoo," might be mistaken for an excursion off topic, but conversely it serves as support for the suggestion that color lives where words do not reach. If color, as Robert Smithson saw from atop tiny quartz crystals at the Upper Montclair quarry in 1966, is truly "promise often mistaken for a threat," then what does it promise? (109). Pink, being the anomaly that it is, the name chartreuse, and the unopened can of black enamel, might be our best vehicles for venturing.