Pathological Colours

There is a certain feeling amongst intellectuals that colour is unrefined, primitive, naive, and the use of it a system for those who have limited or underdeveloped forms of communication.

Goethe says*

“... it is also worthy of remark,that savage nations, uneducated people, and children who have a great predilection for vivid colours; that animals are excited to rage by certain colours; that people of refinement avoid vivid colours in their dress and the objects that are about them, and seem inclined to banish them altogether from their presence.”

*from Theory of Colours, quoted in Chromophobia by David Batchelor

This is an interesting passage, even though it was written in the first decade of the nineteenth century, because a lot of what is discussed here still holds true. Bright colours are not seen as desirable by most adults, either to wear or to live with, and highly coloured art evokes disgust in some viewers who see it as coarse and unrestrained. I witnessed this reaction when I visited The Triumph of Painting show in the Saatchi Gallery, the most saturated colourful paintings seemed to literally repel people, I heard very few comments that weren’t derogatory. Colours are demoted to children’s toy departments in fabricated plastics, dyes are seen as harmful in food and sometimes in clothing and an unnecessary process creating polluting chemicals. The beige sack-cloth is more desirable in the minds of the ecologically and ethically minded. Yet what is colour? Its merely a perception of one species of the light waves being reflected from certain substances, and animals are not as gifted as us in being able to distinguish all the colours of the rainbow (as well as “non spectral" hues like purple, brown and pink). Human beings are highly evolved creatures so to equate colour appreciation with primitivism and low development seems to me to be insensitive and illogical. Animals may use colour to mate or to frighten, the reds and blues of a Macaw and the vivid yellow stripes of a wasp didn’t occur by accident, they are functional, therefore it follows that animals can see colours, but can they go beyond instinct in being able to describe the various hues and be moved by visions of rainbow colours, or have certain shades evoke memories or emotions above those of “fight, flight or fornicate”? People, of all races, ages and abilities can think of themselves as worthy to appreciate colour, as it is part of our complex cognitive function.