Humanities Homework Help

Please read Chapter 2 – Chromophobia from the book Chromophobia by David Batchelor.

discution question:

The author, David Batchelor, often quotes the critic, Charles Blanc (yes, it’s ironic) in this chapter. Blanc identifies colour with the ‘feminine’, and design with the ‘masculine’. What are your thoughts on this 19th century theorist, and why do you think David Batchelor is bringing him up? (Be nice guys!) the reading is attached below:

replys:

1- In Chromophobia, Blanc had strong opinions on color. He associated color as feminine and design as masculine. To Blanc, color evokes the heart and emotions like femininity while design awakens thought and mind like masculinity. Color was for low and simple forms, while design was for the brilliant. Blanc felt that color was chaotic and needed to be tamed by design. Color needed to be subordinate to design like men and women. Blanc’s perspective is insensitive and incorrect. Blanc’s beliefs are filled with the toxicity of the past and personal paranoia. These beliefs are one that I have never considered and will never agree with. Color and design are supportive to one another. One is not better than the other and with the two, beautiful artwork can be developed.

Batchelor credits Blanc because he perfectly displays fear of color. As Batchelor states, Blanc shows phobia by overvaluing the power of what he fears, color. Blanc makes color seem so capably messy and supports many rules and regulations of color. He went so far into his phobia that he contradicts his own beliefs. Blanc declared color as under fixed laws, but that color should be allowed to conform to the colorist. It’s like Blanc doesn’t support abstract art and suddenly does. Blanc’s magnification and inconsistency of color clearly show his fear of colors. Also, I would like to end in a twisted and positive perspective that Blanc is saying that women bring color to the world!

2- I really don’t know what to think of Charles Blanc. I think it is no accident that he associates color with the gender he doesn’t identify as. It seems like the name of the book suggests he is scared of color. To try and give credit to his ideas the best I can come up with is that women are though of usually as softer than men. So maybe the idea is that color is a soft change effecting art in a way not always immediately noticed where as design tends to be brash and jump out at you. Even this falls slightly flat though as we have seen throughout this class color doesn’t always have to be a subtle agent.

It really also begs the question what does he think of famous painters who are men. Throughout history art has been predominantly male dominated for one reason or another so why would he say color is feminine when color is such a huge part of art. Does he think any famous artist who uses color well is mostly feminine. What is most interesting to me though is the idea that color and design are somehow opposites. When in reality an artist usually needs to posses an understanding of both to make good art. As I said earlier it feels like maybe this draws on his own issues more than anything else. I am unsure why the author would choose to quote him other than giving a different perspective on color. Perhaps the author thinks all opinions should be heard no matter how awful they are.

3- Two movies that I’ve seen use color in interesting ways are The Matrix and Pan’s Labyrinth. In The Matrix, color is used to show if the scene was in or out of the matrix. While inside, there was a green tint to everything. I think they chose green as text on old computers was often green. Outside of the matrix, there was a blue tint. I don’t know if this symbolizes anything or is just to contrast the green.

Pan’s Lab does a similar thing with color. In scenes that take place in the real world there’s a blue tint, and scenes that are in the world imagined by Ofelia, the main character, there’s a red or golden tint. I think these color choices just helped shape the mood of the respective scenes. The movie takes place during World War 2 in a military base, so the “real” scenes are generally pretty somber. This contrasts with the “fantasy” scenes where things are not necessarily happy, but certainly had a different tone than war.

4- Before I read this chapter my first perception of the word fall was the fall season and the changing colors of the leaves to browns, oranges, and yellows. Now that I have read the chapter I question why colors on different objects in the world represent what they do and how this can be a negative thing. I found this chapter to be especially interesting because it relates to some of the other questions I have in my other courses this semester. Mainly, my History 1600 class because we are discussing this week about the effects of slavery which relates to this chapter of westerns perception of color. In the 1800s color was represented as a determination of social class that ultimately affected whether or not a person of color could enjoy the newfound liberty and pursuit of happiness.

Western cultural color perception is the main focal point of this chapter and to describe this the author has used the word “fall”. The definition of fall doesn’t exactly perceive exactly how it is used in this chapter. In this chapter, it is used to show how dangerous color can be, and how that danger is shown in the stories of different cultures.

The most compelling definition of fall in the chapter is, “color is a corruption, a lapse, a fall”(Bachelor 24). Blanc claims there are, “two ways to avoid the Fall: abandoning color altogether or controlling it”(Bachelor 27). Because color is such a hard thing to avoid, many try to find ways to control it. Western culture controls it by using it to represent social classes, an example of a fall from grace. The use of color to represent social class created turmoil between the people as the varying cultures had clashing views of color. For whatever reason, the people developed this perception of color, in western culture it has “Fallen”. This is why the author has asked us to question the use of the word fallen because it opens our minds to stories of other cultures that have a fallen use of color.