With color, or without color? That is the question of art.

      I remember growing up with black and white television. My family was raised on the television of America past. Our diet of movies and shows consisted of the Marx Brothers, Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, the Three Stooges, Roy Rogers, Bob Hope, and various other entertainers who appeared in black and white TV. Mind you, this was the 90's. Technicolor had long been invented. We just lived in the past.

     As a kid, I noticed that I was never able to imagine what colors the things on the black and white screen might really be. Harpo Marx supposedly had red hair, but I never believed it. I was convinced that absolutely none of the objects on screen were the color blue, or red, or yellow. To me, every object on the black and white screen was a black and white object. I was happy with the black and white screen. In fact, trying to impose color on black and white movies felt wrong. I could accept the existence of technicolor, but I never liked the idea of coloring in movies that were originally designed for black and white TV. 

     I am not the only person who thinks the imposition of color is, in some sense, unnatural. When the Renaissance Humanists started rediscovering the art of ancient Greece and Rome, the ancient paints had all already faded and washed away from the statues. What was left was the bare marble. The Renaissance artists, trying to imitate the ancients, believed that these statues were supposed to be left colorless. They were just supposed to be bare marble. They did not paint their statues. Magnificent as they were, they left them colorless, believing they were imitating the ancient masters.

     The problem was, of course, that the ancients actually did paint their statues. Recently, Professor K. sent me some photos of reconstructed artistic renderings of Greek sculptures. As Professor K. pointed out, these look more Disneyesque than the Renaissance masters ever could have imagined. 

     Now, I forget where I read this. It might have been on my trip to the British Museum. The way we know these sculptures were painted is through the tiny residue from the paint that lasted these 2000+ years to the present day. It's pretty impressive if you ask me. 

     Like my experience with black and white television, my experience of sculpture has been influenced by its lack of color. It is missing these details. It is, however, strangely complete. I've been conditioned to see statues as marble. In fact, almost all of us in the West have been conditioned since the Renaissance to see statues this way. This colorlessness has become an essential part of our art. The Greek statues, in their original color, are nearly foreign. I almost want to go back in time to the Greeks and tell them they are doing Greek art wrong, the same way an American might want to go to Britain to correct their English. 

     But if we have conditioned ourselves not to see color where it should be, there is also a tendency to see the wrong color. Colors can fade or darken overtime. (Based on my conversations with road sign manufactures, I can tell you that red road signs fade the quickest. Impress your friends with that knowledge.) Sometimes the original colors get lost over time. They change. A bright color might change to a more earthy tone over time. Oddly enough, the color blue (the same color I have such a difficult time imagining in black in white settings) happens to be particularly difficult to preserve in renaissance paintings due to the pigments used at the time. (Source) The Mona Lisa is, in fact, quite corrupted from its original state. Yet, I sometimes think this adds to its charm. 

     It is difficult to imagine the ways in which colors influence us, and the ways in which we become accustomed to the faded, corrupted versions of art. In a certain sense, we have no choice. Art, like anything exposed to time, must fade. In this send, Art history is inseparable from art itself. To appreciate ancient art means we must appreciate its preservation, even if that preservation incorporates elements of distortion. In fact, we are forced to appreciate the distortion. The plain marble of the statue, originally a corruption of the bright colors the Greeks enjoyed, has become the standard of high art. The "form" of the art became the intellectual focus. Its flamboyance was forgotten. 

     The question I want to pose is this: How much of what you hold dear and in high esteem is, in fact, the product of a faded and corrupt history? How much "pure art" is really Disneyesque art corrupted by time?

     But also I pose this question: are you happy that the accident of time removed the color from sculpture? Is the Renaissance better for having made a mistake about the ancients?