Periodic Reporting for period 3 - CHROMOTOPE (The 19th century chromatic turn - CHROMOTOPE)
Período documentado: 2022-10-01 hasta 2024-03-31
CHROMOTOPE addresses what happened to colour in the 19th century and notably how the industrial revolution and the invention of the first synthetic dyes triggered a ‘chromatic turn’ in the 1850s which mapped out new ways of thinking about colour in literature, art, science and technology throughout Europe and beyond.
This research is important for many reasons. First because it offers invaluable insight into neglected aspects of 19th century European cultural history, which the general public often thinks of through a black-and-white filter, as if this were only the ‘funereal’ age of coal pollution. The aim of the CHROMOTOPE team is to dispel this misconception still conveyed in popular culture to show that the industrial revolution was also a ‘colour revolution’. Moreover, the ground-breaking colouring techniques (in painting, printing, dyeing etc.) and new reflections on colour production and perception developed during this key period still shape in many ways our understanding of colour. The main outcome of the project, the exhibition ‘The Colour Revolution: from Turner to Whistler’ will bring to light this modernity of 19th-century colour for as wide an audience as possible.
The overall objectives of the CHROMOTOPE project are:
1.to reveal the artistic and notably literary impact of new scientific approaches to chromatic materialities. This first objective breaks away from traditional discussions of colour symbolism to analyse the artistic and literary inscription of chromatic matter. To this end, the CHROMOTOPE team has devised a pioneering methodology and object-based approach which demonstrates how pigments, both old and new, were unexpectedly used and described by the artists and poets in the second half of the 19th century.
2.to highlight 19th-century International Exhibitions as the colourscapes of modernity. With the help of the CHROMOTOPE team members associated with the CNAM (Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers) this second objective explores more specifically the key role played by 19th century international exhibitions (and in particular the London 1862 International Exhibition) in turning colour into a key signifier of the modern.
3.to understand how industrial colours introduced new forms of ‘colour pedagogy’. This third objective aims to unveil the new types of discourse on colour (artistic, scientific, technical) which emerged in the second half of 19th century as a response to the sudden increase of colour stimuli in the modern industrial world.
This research is important for many reasons. First because it offers invaluable insight into neglected aspects of 19th century European cultural history, which the general public often thinks of through a black-and-white filter, as if this were only the ‘funereal’ age of coal pollution. The aim of the CHROMOTOPE team is to dispel this misconception still conveyed in popular culture to show that the industrial revolution was also a ‘colour revolution’. Moreover, the ground-breaking colouring techniques (in painting, printing, dyeing etc.) and new reflections on colour production and perception developed during this key period still shape in many ways our understanding of colour. The main outcome of the project, the exhibition ‘The Colour Revolution: from Turner to Whistler’ will bring to light this modernity of 19th-century colour for as wide an audience as possible.
The overall objectives of the CHROMOTOPE project are:
1.to reveal the artistic and notably literary impact of new scientific approaches to chromatic materialities. This first objective breaks away from traditional discussions of colour symbolism to analyse the artistic and literary inscription of chromatic matter. To this end, the CHROMOTOPE team has devised a pioneering methodology and object-based approach which demonstrates how pigments, both old and new, were unexpectedly used and described by the artists and poets in the second half of the 19th century.
2.to highlight 19th-century International Exhibitions as the colourscapes of modernity. With the help of the CHROMOTOPE team members associated with the CNAM (Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers) this second objective explores more specifically the key role played by 19th century international exhibitions (and in particular the London 1862 International Exhibition) in turning colour into a key signifier of the modern.
3.to understand how industrial colours introduced new forms of ‘colour pedagogy’. This third objective aims to unveil the new types of discourse on colour (artistic, scientific, technical) which emerged in the second half of 19th century as a response to the sudden increase of colour stimuli in the modern industrial world.
The multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional team of CHROMOTOPE has now almost completed its first two objectives highlighting the crucial role played by chromatic materiality in 19th century art and science. The third objective is underway.
The way writers and artists wrote about colour in 19th-century Europe was indeed shaped by scientific innovation in the field of colour chemistry and colour perception which the team members have been addressing in their publications and other dissemination activities (conferences, seminars, podcasts). They have also shed new light on one exceptional case study, William Burges’s Great Bookcase (1859-62) which is the focus of the PI’s forthcoming monograph (Yale UP, June 2023). This innovative material approach interweaving literature, art and chemistry of colour will provide new insight into how major Victorian artists and writers related to the scientific culture of their time and how this in turn fuelled their artistic imagination and practice.
The chromatic turn brought about by the scientific and technological innovations of the 1850s and 1860s was also highly prominent at the International Exhibitions which punctuated the second half of the 19th century. Archival research into these exhibitions has been shaping the narrative of the exhibition ‘Colour Revolution: Victorian art, fashion and design’ which will open at the Ashmolean Museum on 21 September 2023 and will offer visitors a unique opportunity to experience how the Victorians saw colour.
Finally, the mid 19th century also witnessed a proliferation of discourses on colour and pedagogical texts providing guidance on how to respond to the sudden increase of colour stimuli in the modern industrial world. In order to address these 19th-century debates in terms of their pedagogical impact, the team of CHROMOTOPE organized a summer school for doctoral students in Florence (19-13 September 2022) and is now researching for the project database (the ChromoBase) how colour was described, displayed, classified and taught in Britain, France and Germany during this pivotal period. The project’s PhD student is also working on Ruskin’s teaching collection kept in the Ashmolean archives, which has never, until now, been analysed from the perspective of colour.
The way writers and artists wrote about colour in 19th-century Europe was indeed shaped by scientific innovation in the field of colour chemistry and colour perception which the team members have been addressing in their publications and other dissemination activities (conferences, seminars, podcasts). They have also shed new light on one exceptional case study, William Burges’s Great Bookcase (1859-62) which is the focus of the PI’s forthcoming monograph (Yale UP, June 2023). This innovative material approach interweaving literature, art and chemistry of colour will provide new insight into how major Victorian artists and writers related to the scientific culture of their time and how this in turn fuelled their artistic imagination and practice.
The chromatic turn brought about by the scientific and technological innovations of the 1850s and 1860s was also highly prominent at the International Exhibitions which punctuated the second half of the 19th century. Archival research into these exhibitions has been shaping the narrative of the exhibition ‘Colour Revolution: Victorian art, fashion and design’ which will open at the Ashmolean Museum on 21 September 2023 and will offer visitors a unique opportunity to experience how the Victorians saw colour.
Finally, the mid 19th century also witnessed a proliferation of discourses on colour and pedagogical texts providing guidance on how to respond to the sudden increase of colour stimuli in the modern industrial world. In order to address these 19th-century debates in terms of their pedagogical impact, the team of CHROMOTOPE organized a summer school for doctoral students in Florence (19-13 September 2022) and is now researching for the project database (the ChromoBase) how colour was described, displayed, classified and taught in Britain, France and Germany during this pivotal period. The project’s PhD student is also working on Ruskin’s teaching collection kept in the Ashmolean archives, which has never, until now, been analysed from the perspective of colour.
CHROMOTOPE associates cutting-edge interdisciplinary research with high-impact outcomes, including one major exhibition, a thorough pigment analysis of Burges’s Great Bookcase and an essential database of 19th-century documents on colour (the ChromoBase). Not only does this project shed new light on hitherto neglected aspects of 19th-century cultural history, it also reveals the central role played by chromatic materialities in the intertwined artistic and literary productions of the period. This will act as an essential stimulus to future investigations into the emerging field of material studies for established academics as well as for the next generation of research leaders. Focusing on the literature of the ‘chromatic turn’ indeed offers a unique means to bridge the gap between concrete experimentations with colour (whether industrial, scientific, technical or pictorial) and more abstract reflections on the chromatic (in philosophy, aesthetics, psychology and/or anthropology). This, in turn, will change the way the relationships between text and image, as well as the materiality of the text itself, may be envisaged in literary studies.