Some thoughts on Chromophobia - 72.

So far I have enjoyed reading Chromophobia, though I have found it to be sometimes repetitive and longwinded.  Being someone to whom color, especially what the book sometimes refers to as "artificial" color, is of extreme importance, I find it fascinating.  I enjoyed how the book opened, it was appropriate and humorous (the art collector's inside out house).  I wish that the rest of the book had the same playful air.

Then the book speaks of color throughout Western history, how we westerners have "chromophobia" while our foreign neighbors to the east have surpassed us in their knowledge and application of color.

I thought it was interesting how line and color were such separate things, color being the feminine aspects of art and line or drawing being the masculine.  It was also interesting how later this was brought up in relation to cosmetics, which are colors used to create false feminine beauty.

I also enjoyed the references to Moby Dick and Heart of Darkness and their use of whiteness and of color as devices and symbols, since these are two books I have read and were more familiar to me than other references.  I also thought the analysis on Le Corbusier's own "fall" from color.... How at first he described colors passionately with ecstatic energuy, really until he encountered the Acropolis and its monochromy--after witnessing it, his original destination, the vibrant colorful east, was quickly forgotten.

I also thought it was ironic how he only built one building in his favorite color, white.

Lauren Martin