Oh no! Here comes Color!

In Chromophobia, David Batchelor discusses the "otherness" of color.  In Western culture, color is always seen as excessive, additional, supplemental, superficial, and/or cosmetic.

Here Black and White photographs are colored in with transparent inks.

colorized photos, reposted from http://paul-altobelli.com

In his discussion of photography in Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes saw this colorization as a kind of post-mortem addition, thus emphasizing photography's relationship to death ("This has been")

In fact, early in the history of photography, the practice of taking photographs of deceased loved ones was fairly common.  The desire to capture a likeness, usually the only photo ever taken in life or death, combined with a much higher mortality rate among the young resulted in many images such as these.  Usually they were without color, but here are examples of color being added to the photo to try and get at a sense of a likeness in life.

A hand tinted, post mortem daguerreotype by Beckers and Piard of New York. 
reposted from http://jonreeve.com

(American) Post-mortem of a little girl, late 1840s Daguerreotype, Hand-tinted.from the Henisch Collection of Penn State Library
reposted from http://www.theskullillusion.com

The author discusses Andy Warhol's use of color, how it was put on the surface of his paintings like cosmetics.  Batchelor points out that Warhol does not subvert or lessen the standing of color, arguing that by separating "composition, line, chiaroscuro, color" all are equal in their separation and lack of registration.

Andy Warhol, Electric Chair, 1971

Andy Warhol, Flowers, 1960s

In its presentation as cosmetic it is often equated with the feminine, the homosexual, the exotic, the Oriental.    If these are examples of "otherness" then what would exemplify that which is not "other"?

Even our language makes color into the other- Batchelor gives the example of what we mean when we call someone "colorful"- it is both a complement and a dismissing of serious consideration.

Obviously, the use of the word "colored" to describe anyone who is not caucasian, emphasizes the difference of that person, not the difference of the "white" person.  In terms of "color" names in reference to race, "White" was the first title invented- it is not a real thing, there is no "whiteness" when it comes to people.

This and following advertisements reposted from thoughtcatalog.com
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Here, a blogger calls attention to a contemporary party that uses racial stereotyping and, luckily for our purposes, advertises through a combination of color and feminine associations in addition to the orientalizing factors.    

lhttp://blog.angryasianman.com/2009_03_01_archive.html


From the reading another example of COLOR acting as simulation, decay, death- it fakes, it enlivens, it kills:

And finally, the movie Pleasantville is given as an example of COLOR's challenge to the status quo.  Perhaps, it is here that we can best see what David Batchelor means when he says that we cannot escape color except in art- we are color!

Pleasantville Trailer

"Colored Girlfriend" scene

For our next class, your assignment is to find, print, and bring to class an example of visual culture in which color's "otherness" is highlighted.  

It doesn't matter whether you are a CHROMOPHOBE or a CHROMOPHILE- you can choose an image that plays up what can be seen as either a positive or negative association with color.