The grey affliction has proliferated in the UK over the last twenty years or so. A chromatic malaise whereby owners of property and things in general cannot seem to choose any livery except ….. grey! or shades thereof.
In sympathy with this cultural trend, Erika Mitchell wrote an erotic novel series titled ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’. Is it an apt moniker for the sort of frisson implied? Because there are more than fifty shades of grey and sexual thrills if anything, suggest colour not the dullness of workaday UK and its aging populace
Yoked to the internet, citizens of hope and glory have been rendered colour blind with a parallel universe behind screens. Blunting their eyes in their private little worlds.
Victims of the grey affliction let colour be leeched from their ‘tastefully controlled’ lives. When computers were emerging, a designer announced there were ‘over three million colours’ on his display screen! Using one to good effect would be an achievement.
The grey affliction is everywhere. From sleek Farrow and Ball ‘Estate’ swatches to smug BBC livery or the corporate greys of German automobiles, the British love affair with tasteful conformity goes on. Here in this ‘green and pleasant land’ being able to express oneself with colour is for luvvies, celebs and the media.
For example: pink seems reserved for the gay community or breast cancer. Snappy knickered career girls are accompanied by the relentless beaming of red into our homes as Auntie broadcasts ‘news’. Like media words: ‘iconic’, ‘chilling’, ‘toxic’ etc, a colour can be rendered impotent through over use.
Chromatic jollity has been ring fenced, the general populace keep away. Shed? Better paint it grey. Front door – a nice tasteful grey. Not too harsh on the eye.
This behavioural trait might be due to our shrunken naval power. It can no longer be said ‘Brittania rules the waves’. ‘Battleship Grey’ – think about it! There must be a surplus of paint lurking somewhere. Not since Falklands jingoism has this country required industrial quantities of grey.
The grey affliction can also be attributed to art education (or lack of it). In six years of study at two of the World’s leading art schools, colour was hardly mentioned. At St. Martins, a few of us were shown colour printing for photography and Eric Luke RAS, did mention colour (once). At the Royal Academy Schools, Roderic Barrett gave a micro lecture on the virtues of Raw umber and Burnt umber!
That was it, otherwise ….. one was ‘just supposed to know’. Intuitively. Same old art school chestnut. The vagaries of ‘intuition’. A bit like horoscopes. Saves academic staff getting themselves in a pother tangling with a complex and vast subject.
Imagine an engineering or medical degree based on intuition, where one is ‘just supposed to know’. Anti-biotics? Well, perhaps a bit of Penicillin here and Amoxicillin there. Dropping ordnance? Skip the quadratics; never mind the natives. So long as it’s in the right country. Down there! To the left.
People don’t get much education in using colour. Perhaps during early years they might have been taught to put yellow and blue together to effect a sort of green – with those ghastly powder paints. But when push comes to shove and you’ve got to paint the fence, best stick to grey. Exercise your freedom of choice.
Photo’s by Alan Dedman
Illustration courtesy ‘The Observer’s Book of Ships’
Farrow & Ball advert: the Financial Times, How to Spend It
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