Literature Review 1/4

Chrissie Calvert

Literature Review 1/4

MFA Part 3, 2023

Article being reviewed: Chromophilia: The Design World’s Passion for Colour

Author: Regina Lee Blaszczyk

The article ‘Chromophilia: The Design World’s Passion for Colour’ by Regina Lee Blaszczyk featured in ‘Journal of Design History’, talks about the emergent understanding of colour within both the Design and Fine Art spheres of understanding. There is a heavy importance placed on Josef Albers and how he fits within the Modernist movement.

Blaszczyk begins by acknowledging Josef Albers’ essential contribution to the understanding of colour through his highly regarded book ‘Interaction of Colour’. Bauhaus trained, Albers was intent on interrogating colour in a practical way, and created a pedagogy that expounded upon his own theory that colour was situational and relational as opposed to objective and subjective. His interrogation of colour diverged from ‘The Munsell Color System’, which looks at colour in a purely scientific way. The Munsell system preached that colour was not subjective and the experience of colour does not differ from person to person, and enforces a numbering system which is helpful for colour matching purposes. According to Blaszczyk, Albers saw the limitations of the Munsell system and, in reaction, introduced a rhetoric that challenged the notion that a specific colour would appear the same in any situation. This was achieved through observational facts such as: how the quantity of a colour can change its perception, how surrounding light affects colour, how the atmosphere affects colour, and finally, how adjacent colours affect a colour's perception.

Albers colour theory, according to Blaszczyk, was rooted in a Modernist’s perspective. In this sense, his book Interaction of Colour was his roadmap to universal truth in regards to colour. She states that Alber’s shared the value ‘art as experience’, with a number of Modernists such as: Albert C Barnes a renowned art collector (1872-1951), John Dewey an American Philosopher (1859-1952), and Denman Ross an American art collector, educator, and museum administrator (1853-1935). Despite this Albers was not to be unchallenged. Briony Fer, a well known British art historian and critic, described Albers theory as “...quasi-scientific rhetoric, the kind of discourse that seemed like an exhaustive hangover from Bauhaus aesthetics”. Blaszczyk intuits this quote to mean that, “... Albers had rejected the perceived orthodoxy of commercial colour systems- only to replace them with a new doctrine.”

Blaszczyk acknowledges the possibility that the trivialisation of colour in popular culture initiated Alber’s obsession with colour. She expands on this hypothesis by introducing the critical theorist David Batchelor. Batchelor explains, “It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say that, in the West, since Antiquity, colour has been systematically marginalised, reviled, diminished and degraded. This... needs a name: chromophobia.” Blaszczyk expounds how Chromophobia helps us place Josef Albers in a historical context. She connects Batchelor’s theory of Chromophobia with the tendency to proliferate white walls in the disciplines of Interior Design and Architecture. Theodor Adorno’s ‘Aesthetic Theory’, which according to Blaszczyk, “...implied that there was something infantile in bright colours”, is another example of historical Chromophobia in Western thought.

Blaszczyk asserts that Albers downplayed the long practice of Western colour practice which began in the 1600s and matured in the 1900s within the fields of philosophy, industrial art, science, textiles, fashion and commerce. In light of this, there was push back against Albers in the 1960’s- onward. Blaszczyk explains how colour field painters took initial cues from Albers before rejecting his anti-commercial position. An example was the Abstract Expressionist Josef Stella’s obsession with the then newly developed industrial paints. Ready-made colours and charts were celebrated. Briony Fer commented on the popularity of commercial colours amongst painters, “Just because the colour chart is rooted in a desire to rationalise and standardise, it does not follow that its aesthetic effects are either rational or standard.”

Blaszczyk declares that Albers was one of the last Modernists. His desire to search for the universal truth of colour appears rigid from our perspective, in the relational future. She states “His... approach to colour stemmed from the catholic belief that the role of art in society is to challenge tradition and to capture and re-present authentic reality.” She believes it is possible for colour to be intuited in a commercial setting, and she believes it is desirable to mix these intuitions with rational imperative.

Bibliography

Blaszczyk, Regina L. "Chromophilia: The Design World's Passion for Colour." Journal of Design History 27, no. 3 (2014): 203-217. Accessed February 28, 2023. https;//eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/93592.