In taking the colour chart as exemplar of the incursion of technology into the traditional processes of visual art, Tate Liverpool’s current show seeks to engage with wider questions about man’s relationship with the machines that surround him, and about the possibility of originality. But this show becomes a far more intriguing and ambitious affair than you might expect from its premise. While there is plenty of abstract work taking its cue from the codes, sequences and number matrices of the industrial world, most notably Gerhard Richter’s beautiful 4096 Colours (1971), and in On Kawara’s anxious, sinister Today series (1966-present), which takes the obsession with order lurking behind industrial process to its conclusion in a series of huge bound volumes of dated colour samples, to my mind the most compelling work here exists on the troubled surface between man and technology, and does not attempt to eliminate the human dimension of creation. The methodological exactitude of Kawara thankfully finds an engaging counterpoint in Edward Ruscha’s Stains (1969), a playful series that mixes order and anarchy: the stains are the result of meticulously catalogued combinations of commonly occurring substances like parsley, Coca Cola and bacon grease. There is a kind of glee in the unpredictability of the resulting colours which stands in stark contrast to the terror that Kawara’s work exudes.
If Karawara’s work, and to some extent Richter’s, exhibits a desire to remove the human element and the unpredictability it entails, other work on show emphasises the human element of technology. Jan Dibbets’ Color Studies (2007), a series of close-up photographs of car bodywork, accepts the uniform nature of commercial design, but it also serves to remind us of how such items become objects of personal expression.
Skin colour is a recurrent theme. In one cabinet, a medical chart of skin tones is displayed, while Byron Kim’s Synecdoche (1991-Present) is a series of panels, the colour of each matched to the skin of a different model. The effect is an arresting combination of the intensely personal, even the intimate, with the depersonalised format of an industrial colour chart, and by extension with the dehumanising connotations of identifying people purely by skin tone. Carrie Mae Weems’ Colored People series, meanwhile, presents a different response to the same problem by emphasising that colour is property of light, not of people.
Meanwhile cabinets display examples of industrial colour manuals, along with volumes on theory of perception and aesthetics, an addition which neatly and unobtrusively situates the show in its theoretical background without making heavy weather of it. Word-spotters will enjoy noticing how the publication of colour charts required a sometimes fanciful expansion of the language of colour into such combinations as ‘billiard green’ and ‘red maple’. Yves Klein’s Peintures (1954) provides a flash of much-appreciated wit: a booklet of colour samples masquerading as a catalogue of full size monochromes, funny as well as prematurely postmodern.
Human and machine; order and chaos; terror and mischief… the coexistence of all these forces makes this show a treat. If there is a weak spot, I would have to point reluctantly to the most recent pieces; Jim Lambie’s ZOBOP! (2006), for example, while intriguing in passing, seemed to have little to offer beyond what the earlier pieces in the show had already investigated. Angela Bulloch’s Ideation and Reflection (2003) feels to me more like updating than genuine innovation. But these are minor quarrels; Colour Chart overall is brilliantly conceived and maintains a warmth and humanity that belies the technical nature of its premise. Perhaps most impressively, it is a show as relevant and enjoyable to colour-mad toddlers as it is to scholars of Theodor Adorno. And it’s not often you can say that.
Alphabet Rain 