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FT editor Roula Khalaf selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
When I started renovating my Victorian terraced house in North London, I had little practical experience and a lot of enthusiasm. But instinctively I knew there was only one way to go. The gray hallway with dark gray carpet had to be eliminated and the space filled with color. At first, I wasn’t sure how much color I could use, but my confidence grew quickly. The result was deep red railings, sky blue walls and pink accessories – an unlikely combination, perhaps, but one I enjoyed.
It’s true that I was never a minimalist, but through this process I discovered that I really connected with color. Not just individual shades, but also in ways I didn’t expect: the way color can bring us joy, help us daydream, and, inspired by the arrival of my little girl, urge us to step back and just play.
White, gray and beige may have once defined our era (a modern Scandinavian utopia), but I like to think we’re venturing into a technicolor future. When the furniture designer Sabina Marcelis was invited to reorganize the Vitra Design MuseumIn the German furniture collection, he was guided by the palette. “It was a no-brainer,” she told me. “I decided to strip the objects of any other meaning. Color avoids the need to immerse yourself in context and allows you to zoom in on the details and complexity of each object.”
Color helps us express how we feel, marks who we are, conveys ideologies and shapes the way we experience the world. During the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci proposed a hierarchy of six colors inspired by the ideas expounded by Aristotle, which he identified as crucial to painting and fundamental to achieving perspective and beauty. In the 18th century, Isaac Newton optics examined his experiments on the splitting of white light through a prism. In the 19th century, Goethe intervened with his book color theorywho postulated that the way we see colors is intuitive.
Attempts to fight with color filtered into the 20th century. Artist Bridget Riley gave abstract art the energy of the ’60s with her unexpected juxtapositions of purple and green, or orange and blue, when she introduced color into her geometric patterns. In the 1990s, artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman’s book Chroma: a color book He described his perception of color when his eyesight began to fail. The poetic language she uses to describe specific colors, intertwined with memories, encourages us to capture the deepest beauty of her. At the turn of the millennium, artist David Batchelor published chromophobia, describing society’s fear of color, which he claimed had led to its elimination from Western art and design. “The more I read, the more I notice this pattern of resistance,” he wrote, “this tendency to treat color as other, as something feminine, oriental, primitive, childlike, kitsch, or cosmetic.” The “otherness” of color emphasizes its ability to be more than superficial.
It is also ideological. In the 1970s and 1990s, postmodern designers used bright colors as a reaction to minimalism. At the time, we were entering a new era of identity politics in the “West,” when global majority cultures were beginning to have a voice in mainstream music and fashion. Postmodernism reflected this through its aesthetic tropes, which were eclectic, colorful, and challenged convention. Now postmodernism is making a comeback, which partly explains why the color is back in fashion. And, at a time when we are giving more space to cultures that have been marginalized from the global conversation, it makes sense that we rethink the way we use color. An entire generation of artists with plural identities, from filmmaker to experience designer Nelly Ben Hayoun to the architect Adam Furman, shows how color can allow us to challenge Western-centric design. At this year’s Venice Biennale, Jeffrey Gibson became the first Indigenous artist to represent the US, filling the pavilion with intricate craftsmanship fused with contemporary references that put color center stage. If beige is flat and commodified, the color of corporate atriums and new tin construction, then color is empowering, democratizing, relatable, the unapologetic language of protest signs and queer culture.
Let’s not forget, There are geographies where color is a constant. Take the vivid textile dyes, truck graphics, kite art and food markets of South Asia: from red to indigo, turmeric to green. Color is not just decorative in South Asian culture; It is essential for design and spirituality. During the annual Hindu festival of Holi, which marks the arrival of spring, entire communities throw colored powders into the air, turning the streets into a canvas.
Last year, I selected The unconventional saree in it Design Museum in London, who is currently touring the Wereld Museum in Amsterdam. It presents the ways in which the sari has undergone a radical revision in urban India. The selected sarees are full of color: from Amit Aggarwalfrom the pink sari made of polymers to a shiny seaweed green and metallic linen sari from Anavila Misra. Likewise, exhibition designers Study Stray Dog and Sthuthi Ramesh Take advantage of color in the galleries, with painted walls that challenge the idea of an exhibition space as a white cube.
Color reveals who we are and reveals uncomfortable realities. It’s an idea explored by Maggie Nelson in blue, one of my favorite books (recently adapted for the stage and premiered at the Royal Court Theater this month). At the beginning, he tells us: “And then I fell in love with a color – in this case, the color blue – as if I fell under a spell, a spell that I struggled to stay under and get out of, in turns. “As she tells us about the blue used by artists and figures in cultural history, we realize that she is actually writing about grief. His obsession helps her get to the bottom of his deepest thoughts.
Color is an aesthetic choice, but it has much more to say. It is a way of constructing our identities, giving space to ideas beyond the status quo. If you are interested in living, you have to celebrate color, dream about it, soak up its deep meanings and its dizzying rainbows. Color is life.