Homer never once calls the sea blue. In his poems it is ‘wine-dark', and Ancient Greek had no word for blue at all. In the nineteenth century this was taken as evidence that the Greeks could not distinguish colours. The question it raised is still open: whether people see colour as it is, or as they have been taught to see it.
THE LECTURE COVERS:
Clothing, objects and the colour of walls are chosen every day, and each of these choices rests on conventions agreed by others over thousands of years.
VENUE. OKNO is a cultural centre run by BGFF e.V., a Berlin association for intercultural education, in the Brunnenviertel of Berlin-Mitte. Its room, arranged like a small chamber theatre, is used for lectures, workshops and exhibitions.
- why red was the first colour to which people gave meaning;
- why blue is usually the last colour to be named in the world’s languages;
- why purple became the highest colour in both Rome and China, for opposite reasons;
- how sumptuary laws led to black at the Spanish court and to the ‘48 browns and 100 greys' (shijūhatcha hyakunezumi) of Edo-period Japan.
Clothing, objects and the colour of walls are chosen every day, and each of these choices rests on conventions agreed by others over thousands of years.
VENUE. OKNO is a cultural centre run by BGFF e.V., a Berlin association for intercultural education, in the Brunnenviertel of Berlin-Mitte. Its room, arranged like a small chamber theatre, is used for lectures, workshops and exhibitions.
SPEAKER. Alexander Sheremetev is an art historian and researcher specialising in the symbolism, ornament and visual culture of Japan. He has worked with museums for over twenty years, curating private and public collections, developing university courses and advising private projects. He lectures and writes, situating aesthetic form within its historical, philosophical and structural context.
