How colours everywhere are able to manipulate our senses

At Emmys 2018 what dazzled me most was the Prabal Gurung dress worn by Tiffany Haddish, with the macaw colours of the Eritrean flag flowing down in vertical lines. It reminded me of how I thought it was natural for his brothers in the biblical story to envy Joseph for his coat of colours - as I did! Film makers certainly know how to deploy the hypnotic effect of colour, as did Polish auteur Krzysztof Kieslowski in his trilogy named after the Blue, White and Red of the French flag, evoking the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity.

Seeing that we apprehend the world through colours the poet Christina Rossetti wrote, “What is green? The grass is green, with small flowers between. What is violet? Clouds are violet, sailing in the summer twilight.” Hearing, smell, taste and touch can do much but how do we make sense of the world without knowing crimson, amber, teal, chartreuse and azure?

John Keats wrote poems like a stained glass window, animating more than two senses simultaneously, synesthetically. (In a lecture on visual psychophysics by neuroscientist VS Ramachandran I learnt how synesthetes, people whose sensory wires are crossed to make unintended connections between the senses, can actually “hear” painting and “see” music!) As colours are intrinsic to both emotional and cognitive experience, and to memory, poets paint directly as in “My luv’s like a red, red rose”, and obliquely, as the “green-eyed monster” preys on Othello.

Fortune tellers associate colours with planets influencing human life. Astrologers suggest wearing a specific colour for good luck, or as a talisman against misfortune. Characters are read according to the client’s colour preference  - “Peacock blue? Passionate, with a tendency to nourish grudges. Sky blue? A sunny temperament, a core of serenity...”  Absurd? Why then do business houses choose colour schemes aimed to attract/soothe/persuade customers? Why do advertisers and publicists  kill themselves to find the right shade for their product display? Colour therapy too has found its niche today. Why not? After all, science has proved that different colours affect or induce varying moods in animals and humans.

A cult novel in Tamil centre stages an artist’s obsession to discover the secret of the enduring colours in the paints used in the Ajanta frescoes. This historical saga was published in a magazine and printing press housed on the ground floor of my childhood home. Watching illustrators there making black lines on white paper spring to life with brush and paint, I became intrigued by paint itself - its quality, pigments, tones, textures and ingredients. Later, watching dyers and kalamkari crafts persons at work convinced me that the seeping of colours into paper and cloth is nothing short of visceral magic.

French Impressionist painters were making the same magic as they let colour seep into light, revealing a new world to be cognised in a new way.  Stylistically different though they may be, their intuitive use of colour makes a Picasso or a Magritte unforgettable. Joan Miro reached a level unknown to art with his “oneiric” abstractions, creating a sense of space with a single dominant colour.  And who can surpass the mysterious sensuality of Georgia O’Keeffe’s flowers, or the mythic brilliance of Frida Kahlo’s self portraits where the colours flame forth as distinct entities in themselves?

In the ancient world pigment hunting was a long drawn out, chancy and costly affair, each odyssey trailing a fabulous tale. Art historian Simon Schama describes how Marco Polo saw lapis lazuli mined and powdered in Badakhshan (Afghanistan), to be brought to Europe through endless caravan routes, more expensive than gold, used only for Virgin Mary’s ultramarine robe. Mummy brown was extracted from plundered pyramids, and Dragon’s Blood, reputed to come from the blood of dragons and elephants battling to death, was tamely sourced from the resin of trees in Sumatra! European experts sought the mystery ingredient which made yellow blaze out from the Mughal murals and illustrated books. In the 1880s, TN Mukharji, sent by the director of Kew Gardens to investigate, “discovered” that the pigment was created from the urine of “unhealthy” cows in Mirzapur, fed on a diet of mango leaves. Was Mukharji’s account nothing more than “taking the piss?” However, Schama admits that tests in 2016 revealed traces of acids in Indian Yellow, associated with animals, a possible by-product of digested mango leaves!

Did you know colour can cause moral outrage in the art world as triggered by sculptor Anish Kapoor when he acquired exclusive rights to a special black? We are aware too that outrage of another kind is triggered by our notions of colour in our ratings of feminine beauty, and as evident in the racist divide. In Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye”, (a gut-wrenching novel sought to be banned in schools) an African-American girl dreams of blue eyes, blonde hair and white skin. But that is another story.  

The author is a playwright, theatre director, musician & journalist. Views are personal.