The Secret Lives of Colour: Kassia St Clair Book Review
“Colour is fundamental to our experience of the world around us”
A round of applause is necessary for my favourite art book of all time.
In the continual age of publishing, it is rare that I can say I have finally found a binge-worthy book that I like to indulge in again and again. This book is it.
I cannot even begin to mention what intrigued me so much about the book.
To begin, it’s aesthetic appeal is paramount. The collection of carefully annotated nuggets of information combined with its aesthetic layout makes it a feast for your very eyes.
There were many sections I took great delight in. I will walk you through them.
Obviously, as an obsessive colour and makeup fanatic, I found the more muted tones of brown and white of great appeal to me.
An example comes in the muted, alluring hue of Russet. A poignant tone, Russet was quintessentially emblematic of the struggles following the British Civil War debacles. The hue adorned a binary, double-reading regarding its cultural epistemology. The colour was emblematic of the brave and the petty. This was so much so that Oliver Cromwell spoke highly of the treasures of the pigment
“Russet is a reminder that a colour lives more in the imagination of a generation than bound into a neat colour reference”.
What is significant about this book is its apolitical cultural relevance to the normative fashion of centralised thought.
This book makes you rethink the very value of colour, making it intrinsic to the social fabric of society.
This was ever so apparent in the evaluation of the hue Hematite. The preface of the chapter on red, analyses the abstract nature colour has on social thought. Red has baser associations with lust and anger, and from a psychoanalytic standpoint, this is even more apparent in the hue of hematite.
St Clair is astute in her analysis that society has garnered a rather “prehistoric fuss” over the significance of the hue as Ancient Egyptians were known to adorn linen stained with hematite, during the mummification embalmment process.
This pre-historic fixation on the hematite hue of red arose from its affective orientation towards lust and aggression.
“Most anthrapologists and archaelogists believe that, as the colour of blood, red is associated with life - celebration, lust, sex, joy - danger and death…the fate of the mineral as a pigment provides compelling proof for two theories: if the first is that the colour red holds a special place in the human psyche, the second is surely that people are shamelessly attracted to bright colours”.
So the question that arises is, what the hell is the point?
If colour has an intrinsic link to society, why does this matter. St Clair analyses this in the book and provides a brilliant explanation for the power of colour.
“Chromophilia, Chromophobia”
In Western culture, colour was seen as a distraction from the true glories of art. Scholars were dismissive of its benefits. However, St Clair is indignant in her assertion that colour is a vital signifier in social language.
This is important to note the next time you have an argument with someone on whether millennial pink is really salmon in disguise.
Bravo St Clair, Bravo.
Star Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
(6 stars out of 5)