Hot Pink
One thing that Kathleen and I independently remembered on Tuesday was our first Election Day in New York, on 4 November 1980. I still didn't have a job, and Kathleen decided to take the day off. (Surely it was not deemed a holiday at her firm?) We were going to paint the foyer of Kathleen's studio apartment, and we were going to paint it a hot pink, a color that Pratt & Lambert labeled "Parisienne." When we were through, we were exhilarated by the intensity of the small room's pinkness. It might have been blinding, but, not surprisingly given the manufacturer, it came off as a hot pink with subtlety. We would use the same color a year later to paint the foyer of our first apartment as a married couple, in the same building as the studio and in the same building that we still inhabit. Two years after that, we found that we were more or less done with hot pink. The foyer of our current apartment is painted a very dark green.
I remember reading, in an old House & Garden decorating book, that "color is a magic wand of excitement." Perhaps for that reason, it is a magic wand that most people seem reluctant to pick up. Colors are awfully easy to get wrong. I remember trying to give our bedroom walls the freshness of limeade, only to wind up with a room that was haunted by hospital green. Beyond the mundane risk of choosing unwisely, though, lies a deep-rooted prejudice against color in Western culture, absorbingly traced by David Batchelor in Chromophobia (Reaktion, 2000).
Since Aristotle's time, the discrimination against colour has taken a number of forms, some technical, some moral, some racial, some sexual, some social. As John Gage notes in his vast historical survey of colour theory, colour has regularly been linked with other better-documented sexual and racial phobias. As far back as Pliny, it was placed on the "wrong" end of the opposition between the occidental and the oriental, the Attic and the Asian, in a belief that "the rational traditions of western culture were under threat from insidious non-western sensuality." In later times, the Academies of the West continued and consolidated this opposition. For Kant, colour could never participate in the grand schemes of the Beautiful or the Sublime. It was at best "agreeable" and could add "charm" to a work of art, but it could not have any real bearing on aesthetic judgment.
The association of color with femininity and its bastard sibling, effeminacy, remains widespread, and I am sure that by talking up a hot pink foyer I raised a few eyebrows. I'll be the first to admit that my response to color is deeply sensual: the right color can startle both mind and body into a harmony that fairly throbs. Whether most men are actually incapable of such a reaction or are, rather, brought up to resist it I cannot say, but I suspect, perhaps optimistically, that it is a rare case of nurture trumping nature. Growing males are so eager to shun anything associated with girls that a non-essential regard for color will be suppressed without a moment's thought. Mr Batchelor finds the same anxiety at the heart of the Western disdain for color. I find it underlying the privileging of rationality, a distinctly Western choice that was first proposed by philosophers at a time when the Parthenon was blazingly polychromed. The men of the West appear to have talked themselves into a collective dread of the untidy and the complicated. It's the kind of dread that motivates people to ignore what they're afraid of, not to deal with it.
Hot pink did a lot to cheer us up after the shock of that long-ago Election Day.
Comments
1980? Reagan, oh the horror.
Well, I love red. I finally found the 'right' red in the late 80s and it still adorns my living room.
It is not to many tastes. A very close friend was in my flat when I mentioned I was having the place painted. He leapt at this news, exclaiming how happy he was I was changing the color and that the red was making me even crazier than I am predisposed to be.....during this outburst I noticed his partner trying to signal him to end the diatribe because he knew I had carefully said 'painted' and made no mention of a new color. There was a great deal of embarassment followed by laughter. And after an appropriate period of suffering, forgiveness.
I like strong colors, not wishy-washy pastels. And do remember being careful what colors I wore when growing up lest they be considered effeminate. Even today on the trading desk, pink shirts can elicit comments.... ah, testosterone.......paint everything red I say.
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November 9, 2006 12:48 PM
Ah color, the bane of many a married couple's existence. He wants neutral, she wants vibrancy, or vice versa. And RJ's noting the senses of power and identity surrounding color are spot on.
I think "color" as applied to later 20th and 21st century walls and the conundrums it elicits these days has equally to do with the medium as the hue. Latex has given the world an easy to apply, easy to clean, and clean up, paint but it has also "deadened" the paint. Long gone, until very recently, were the lustrous oils or hand-made paints with finely powdered minerals providng color with depth and shimmer, responsive to the changes in light. Our time period has also robbed us of the opportunities some of our ancestors had; red is superb when the ceiling is over ten feet high and it is contained within handsome moldings - in a box-like apartment, red can become a tomb (sorry PPOQ), unless relieved by the proper furnishings and ornaments. It is worth taking the natural light of your locale into consideration as well; what works in the Mediterranean is often insipid in Northern climes.
Personally, I like color in objects, leading me to choose relatively neutral tones for walls by default so the objects can read well. Also, for me, it is more about "light", hence the attraction to the colors of items that play well with reflections and shadow - glass, porcelain, mirror, silver, gold, bronze, silk, satin, velvet, etc. A lady I love madly has a theory that all gay men are attracted to anything shiny. I must agree with her - the barracuda in us, I guess.
I would suggest for the novice the judicious use of black or a velvety deep gray. Nothing is handsomer than a black/dark gallery with chalk white pilasters, columns or even simple moldings in the midst of a circuit of rooms in varying "neutral" tones. All colors explode into life against a soft black backround, which is why jewelers have displayed their wares on black velvet for centuries.
Posted by: LXIV | November 9, 2006 01:37 PM
I love this post.
Color has extraordinary transformative powers. I live in an apartment bestowed with very little natural light (oh, the joys of dwelling on the lower floors of the Manhattan walk-up!), and color has been my salvation during the bleak winter months.
It's oftentimes difficult to freely enjoy color here in the Northeast, where the Pottery Barn aesthetic looms large. I've observed that the youth are given greater license to experiment with color (college dorm rooms and first apartments often showcase a splendid array); and that this freedom (along with many others) is compromised with the pressures of American adult life. This loss is not at all mourned, in fact, it is accepted quite naturally-- as the lack of color seems to be one's heritage and fate.
Posted by: EJ | November 9, 2006 10:35 PM