Description: Chromophobia -- a fear of corruption or contamination through color -- has been a cultural phenomenon since ancient Greek times; this book is concerned with its modern and contemporary manifestations, as well as with resistance to it in art. The central argument of Chromophobia is that a chromophobic impulse lurks within Western culture. It is apparent in the many attempts to marginalize color, either by making it the product of some "foreign" body -- the Oriental, the feminine, the infantile, the vulgar, or the pathological -- or by relegating it to the realm of the superficial, the supplementary, the inessential, or the cosmetic -- which in many cases amounts to the same thing. Color has also been marginalized in critical discourse. Writers who have discussed color and culture have tended to look no further than the end of the nineteenth century; philosophers who have analyzed color and its suppression in the twentieth century have tended to be fragmentary in their treatment. Critical discussion of Pop, Minimal and Conceptual art has systematically avoided color; critics often ignore or deny its presence and meaning. In this highly original study, David Batchelor seeks to analyze the motivations behind chromophobia, considering the work of writers and philosophers who have used color as a significant motif, and offering new interpretations of familiar texts and works of art.

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