Chromophobia
David Batchelor
[...] The notion that colour is bound up with the fate of Western culture sounds odd, and not very likely. But this is what I want to argue: that colour has been the object of extreme prejudice in Western culture. For the most part, this prejudice has remained unchecked and passed unnoticed. And yet it is a prejudice that is so all-embracing and generalized that, at one time or another, it has enrolled just about every other prejudice in its service. 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. It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say that, in the West, since Antiquity, colour has been systematically marginalized, reviled, diminished and degraded. Generations of philosophers, artists, art historians and cultural theorists of one stripe or another have kept this prejudice alive, warm, fed and groomed. As with all prejudices, its manifest form, its loathing, masks a fear: a fear of contamination and corruption by something that is unknown or appears unknowable. This loathing of colour, this fear of corruption through colour, needs a name: chromophobia.
Chromophobia manifests itself in the many and varied attempts to purge colour from culture, to devalue colour, to diminish its significance, to deny its complexity. More specifically: this purging of colour is usually accomplished in one of two ways. In the first, colour is made out to be the property of some ‘foreign’ body - usually the feminine, the oriental, the primitive, the infantile, the vulgar, the queer or the pathological. In the second, colour is relegated to the realm of the superficial, the supplementary, the inessential or the cosmetic. In one, colour is regarded as alien and therefore dangerous; in the other, it is perceived merely as a secondary quality of experience, and thus unworthy of serious consideration. Colour is dangerous, or it is trivial, or it is both. (It is typical of prejudices to conflate the sinister and the superficial.) Either way, colour is routinely excluded from the higher concerns of the Mind. It is other to the higher values of Western culture. Or perhaps culture is other to the higher values of colour. Or colour is the corruption of culture. [...]
"Pine Trees" by Hasegawa Tohaku
[...] It consists of a pair of six-fold screens, i.e., two six-piece paintings symmetrically positioned side by side, painted with powerful, dynamic brush strokes. In this work, we can find highly diverse yet always effective applications of white and emptiness. [...] Tohaku's provocative demonstration of empty space and emptiness is crystallized in "Pine Trees". It conveys the lively image of trees by intentionally avoiding detailed description, an approach that activates the imaginations of its viewers. In short, the painting's very roughness and omission of details awakens our senses (White, Kenya Hara)
"Monotonous Space" by Kitasono Katsue (1902-1978)
On the theme of white and negative space.
a white square
within it
a white square
within it
a white square
within it
a white square
within it
a white square
within it
This verse conveys an image that is extraordinarily white. A white square appears which is whiter than the one that preceded it. The within it another white square appears which is whiter still. We can say that this series of whites is highly conceptualised, but if we think of white as sensual experience, the poem brings us closer to white's essential quality. Furthermore, picturing white as a square makes its whiteness all the more striking (White, Kenya Hara)
a white square
within it
a white square
within it
a white square
within it
a white square
within it
a white square
within it
This verse conveys an image that is extraordinarily white. A white square appears which is whiter than the one that preceded it. The within it another white square appears which is whiter still. We can say that this series of whites is highly conceptualised, but if we think of white as sensual experience, the poem brings us closer to white's essential quality. Furthermore, picturing white as a square makes its whiteness all the more striking (White, Kenya Hara)