David Batchelor: Colour and the other

About

Chromophobia – a fear of corruption or contamination through colour – has lurked within Western culture since ancient times. In Western culture, colour has often been reviled as foreign, feminine, infantile, vulgar, or else relegated to the realm of the superficial, the inessential or the cosmetic.

In this broad-ranging lecture, artist and writer David Batchelor explores 19th- and 20th-century ideas about colour and its association with the oriental and the exotic. He considers Delacroix's sensuous palette, the writings of Baudelaire, and his own artistic responses to this Western ambivalence to colour.