Wednesday 9 March 2016

The Law of Ripolin

I was reading excerpts from a book called Chromophobia, by David Batchelor - and I was quite appalled by the basic argument. That Colour itself is a symbol of contamination!


A lot of people seemed to have argued for this thought. Colour has been associated with everything impure - with vulgarity, with superficiality, with the cosmetic, with loose character. Colourful women wearing loud clothes and make up, are considered to be the opposite of chaste. Colour as adornment - jewellery, costume, decoration - is a sign of ego, of vanity, of wanting to show off. Colour apparently is immoral.

Kant says colour can at best be a charmer, but it is not the core of beauty or aesthetics. Huxley said he saw colours come alive after he opened the Doors of Perception with the drug intake. Le Corbusier says form comes first, colour is insignificant. He goes so far to say that every house should be 'whitewashed' (cleansed) with a coating of white Ripolin paint (he has termed this as the Law of Ripolin).

White, plain white, to be clean. To symbolise simplicity and morality.

Purity.


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