ChromophobiaThe 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, either by making it the property of some "foreign body" - the oriental, the feminine, the infantile, the vulgar, or the pathological - or by relegating it to the realm of the superficial, the supplementary, the inessential, or the cosmetic. Chromophobia has been a cultural phenomenon since ancient Greek times; this book is concerned with forms of resistance to it. Writers have tended to look no further than the end of the nineteenth century. David Batchelor seeks to go beyond the limits of earlier studies, analyzing the motivations behind chromophobia and considering the work of writers and artists who have been prepared to look at color as a positive value. Exploring a wide range of imagery including Melville's "great white whale", Huxley's reflections on mescaline, and Le Corbusier's "journey to the East", Batchelor also discusses the use of color in Pop, Minimal, and more recent art. |
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Adolf Loos aesthetic Amédée Ozenfant annihilation appear architecture artificial artists Bakhtin basic colour terms Baudelaire beautiful becomes begins Berlin-Kay Bernard Berenson black and white Blanc blue bright brilliant brown Cézanne Charles Blanc chromophilic chromophobia colour chart colour circle colour theory colourists colourless commercial paints confusing Conrad contemporary Corbusier Corbusier’s corruption culture Dorothy Dorothy’s dream drugs entirely Esseintes everything eyes fall into colour film flat Flatland flowers green grey Hanunoo Heart of Darkness Henri Michaux hierarchy hues Huxley Huxley’s intense intoxication Judd Kansas Klein Kristeva language Le Corbusier least light line and colour London looked make-up Marlow Melville mescaline Mikhail Bakhtin modern monochrome moral nature Newton objects opposite orange oriental painter perhaps pink Pleasantville precious stones pure rainbow rhetoric Roland Barthes Screaming Lord Sutch screen-printed sense sexual shiny Shock Corridor spectrum Stella stories Subsequent quotations surface things tinted trans vulgar Warhol’s words yellow