What Color Is the Sacred?

his book isn’t necessarily as stuffy as its title and premise make it out to be. It is, however, erudite throughout, even as it meanders away from what might be considered the thesis down long diatribes about interesting, if only-connected-by-gossamer-threads, side topics. It’s an unusual and intriguing ride, and one bolstered by the author’s unique voice. Honestly, even at the pace with which I coast through a book, I often end up feeling as though I wasted the effort of flicking my eyes from left to right across the page of one as dense as this one–but not so with this particular offering. If you have any interest in the topic at all, the intriguing voice of the author will cart you through the book as long as you’re open to some divergence in motif.

Alternately, if any of these interest you a touch: Goethe, Walter Benjamin, William Burroughs, Bronislaw Malinowski, the textile trade concurrent with the apex of the slave trade, or Proust, you’re likely to enjoy Taussig’s musings on them as they collude with color, for these are the main characters of the narrative in this book. Further, if you’ve a strong interest in any of these finer points: Michel Leiris (from whom the book takes its name), Van Eyck and his Van ilk, Jean Selz or Brion Gysin (and assorted other folks who might or might not have–but we can imagine–interacted with William Burroughs), Charles Gabriel Seligmann or his (and Malinowski’s) craft of ethnography, a certain Mr. Colesworthy Grant and his primary source account of the textile dyeing trade in the 19th century, coal and its worthiness as a progenitor of modern dyes (at the hands of IG Farben), Joseph Conrad and his heart and associated darkness, and last, but not least (where this author’s is concerned), etymology as indicator of reality… if you’ve a strong interest, they, and others like them, round out the dramatis personae. The thrust of this book is a focused stream of consciousness and consistent allusions to that lot are the mainstay of the descant.

What I liked about this book was that it didn’t (often) get mired in the language and ideas of colors as what we see, and, conversely, it didn’t attempt to draw a set of heavy-handed conclusions and then amass data to engorge them. What it did was offer continuously evolving theses about color. He opens, more or less, on the idea that color “is not secondary to form, that it is not an overlay draped like a skin over a shape… it is the combustible mix of attraction and repulsion towards color that brings out its sacred qualities” (9). This after stories and thoughts from Burroughs and Goethe amongst others (notably Ticio Escobar). From there he takes a “color walk” through time and across the globe.

I came away from the book with many concepts and artists into which I desired a deeper rumination, particularly the painters and authors discoursed at the beginning. Contemplations about color are jostled amidst interesting quotes from the aforementioned authors and others like Satre, Virginia Woolf and Melville. Descriptions of painters and paintings are common as well. Throughout, the voice of the author pulls us along the thin tendril connecting the central(ish) ideas by tying the disparate facets to which he alludes together, reminding us of their similarities and peppering in just enough etymology talk to make it plausible. I won’t say every argument is convincing, but they are at least original.

The middle third of the book doesn’t avoid miring as well as the rest. I might otherwise have little interest in ethnography, the work of Malinowski, as a discipline or the role of textiles and dyes and their historical trade (about a third of the book is dedicated to these two uber-topics), but a thought asserting that “[t]he slave trade owed much to the color trade linking the chromophilic parts of the globe, such as India and Africa” (136) did make me rethink some assumptions. The detailed, casually-knowing way in which Taussig elucidates these topics makes it almost gripping regardless (again, assuming some mild topical interest).

It’s an admittedly challenging topic he tussles with, but his unique voice and seemingly endless list of possible allusions make for a rewarding read. He doesn’t shy away from drawing tenuous conclusions or asserting unlikely connections, but the sureness with which he writes and the details on which he hangs his hat intrigue with regularity.