mutant bastard yucky colors of the apocalypse

Laven­der is the Yel­low of Japan. Hot Pink is the Navy Blue of In­dia.

So how did dusty rose, sun­tan and what my friend, Gen­er­a­tion X au­thor Dou­glas Cou­p­land calls “veal” be­come America’s first palette? The plat­inum bomb­shell Mae West is quot­ed as say­ing, “I used to be Snow White, but I drift­ed.” Ladies and gen­tle­men, we have drift­ed.

I blame Michael Graves. You got­ta blame some­body. To be hon­est, I’m not re­al­ly sure, but I do re­mem­ber see­ing pic­tures of fussy, con­trived, over­pro­duced “post­mod­ern” build­ings, or­na­ment­ed with gar­ish aqua ar­chi­tec­tur­al doo­dads. Maybe some­thing teal­ish or gray-green, stuck wan­ton­ly on tops of things in a cheeky fan shape. And then the dirty pinks crept in through un­sus­pect­ing doors and in­no­cent win­dows. At first I thought it was an arty anom­aly, but it spread like a can­cer. It fil­tered down, and it’s kept us there too long. Down in the mud.

Okay, so I don’t know who start­ed it, but I do know when. The time: 1983. The place: Raleigh, North Car­oli­na. Best West­ern? Hol­i­day Inn? Qual­i­ty, Pre­miere, Em­bassy or Some­thing Suites? It sud­den­ly be­came ap­par­ent that while my freck­led back was turned, all of the nor­mal col­ors had been tak­en away. In their place I found an un­holy ar­ray of pink­ish grays, in every pos­si­ble mu­ta­tion. I had been un­will­ing­ly in­tro­duced to the first fam­i­ly of bas­tard col­ors. Gray­ish ma­roon. Pale pink gray. Dark pink gray. A Dior lip­stick that Pol­ly chris­tened “Vul­va.” Have these mis­cast, mis­be­got­ten mix­tures been cho­sen to ex­press the warmth and hos­pi­tal­i­ty of our na­tion? Re­al­ly?

I learned their lu­di­crous hill­bil­ly names. They were “Dusty Rose” and “Heather.” The wall, the trim, the chair, the nap­kin. The co­or­di­nat­ing pat­terned up­hol­stery, sport­ing all these bil­ious hues, some­times ac­cent­ed with bits of teal. Or veal! Every­where, bil­ious salmon-grey plac­ards, warm­ly thank­ing us for not smok­ing. But what if we were? In 1982, you’d bet­ter be­lieve it. I see Con­rad Hilton, twist­ing in the wind.

The sec­ond group, the de­testable Teals had an in­sid­i­ous al­liance with the per­vert­ed Ros­es. I saw them every­place, mix­ing, con­trast­ing and ca­vort­ing, in full view of re­spectable fam­i­lies: The Greens, The Reds, The Blacks and The Blues. Soon, most things looked like this. I went into a deep de­pres­sion – per­haps, a brown study – when I dis­cov­ered that even Prozac was en­cap­su­lat­ed in two tones of teal. How about some Off-Red Ros­es for a Blue-ish Lady?

In a sport­ing goods store, a wide va­ri­ety of ar­ti­cles were to be found in Aqua­ma­rine with Plum-grey, Green­ish-blue with Off-pur­ple. Back­packs in Lilac! Fris­bees in Puce! It be­came sus­pi­cious­ly easy to find teal col­ored pa­tio fur­ni­ture and dusky ma­gen­ta pa­per plates. There’s a fine line be­tween the ex­ot­ic and the grotesque. When a baby’s car seat is only avail­able in ma­roon, egg­plant or plum, that line has been crossed with a vengeance. Please Don’t Step on My Heather Suede Shoes. ART TK

But wait, there’s more. Oh, the Sand­stone Rose of Texas, Min­neso­ta and Maine! A for­ay to the West Coast in­tro­duced me to the Third fam­i­ly, The Ter­ra­cot­tas. This is a large and earthy brood, a Tan Clan, hav­ing warm and fuzzy re­la­tions with the Adobes. Al­though they flour­ish in our cow­boy states, they’ve put down their dirty roots every­where, of­ten ac­com­pa­ny­ing the Teals and the Ros­es on their ar­chi­tec­tur­al jour­neys. You can see them to­geth­er down at the mall: a ter­ra­cot­ta wall, aqua ta­bles in the cafe, fit­ted with ma­gen­ta ban­quettes. Bone­heads. Of course, when used with dis­cern­ment, a neu­tral palette has a calm­ing ef­fect. Pos­si­bly with an ac­cent in red or black? It is the pop­ulist, per­va­sive and shame­ful­ly Amer­i­can com­bi­na­tion of aquas, tans, and dirty pinks that of­fend me.

Call me a hue-ist? I want clean col­ors from good fam­i­lies! Col­ors you rec­og­nize. “Hel­lo, Yel­low! Howdy, Brown! Hola, Blue, How are You? Hey there, Black, Wel­come Back!” By 1990 it was Too Late.

The “Tweeds” cat­a­logue had ar­rived. Re­mem­ber “Tweeds”? I or­dered some­thing in “Peb­bles,” but the six­teenth-of-an- inch print­ed sam­ple couldn’t pos­si­bly com­mu­ni­cate the dread­ful ef­fect when spread out over a size six­teen hu­man fe­male. The ef­fect was to­tal­ly Bam-Bam. I might have ex­changed it for an at­trac­tive shirt, but what to choose? Peat? Re­flec­tion? Frost­bite? Roque­fort? Bruise? It wasn’t so much the kooky names, but the fact that these col­ors were all greyed-out ver­sions of ac­tu­al col­ors. They hadn’t just named a blue shirt “Seascape;” it ac­tu­al­ly was an un­cer­tain, in-be­tween shade, one which you might as well call Seascape, and “Blue” was not avail­able.

In my own work as a de­sign­er, I have suf­fered the slings and ar­rows of the pre­vail­ing taste. An iden­ti­ty I de­signed, us­ing Red (PMS 032) and Blue (PMS 285) was re­ject­ed, on the ground that these were not so­phis­ti­cat­ed col­ors. One client queried, “Why can’t you use, like, yel­low and gray?” My re­sponse? “Well, I could, but then I’d have to, like, shoot me.”

Most of the time, I live in New York, where, when col­ors are dirty it’s be­cause they are cov­ered in ac­tu­al dirt. The rest of the time I live in Swe­den, where col­ors like red, yel­low, blue and green can still be found in all their un­blend­ed pu­ri­ty. Of course, Scan­di­navia is fa­mous for its bright­ly col­ored tex­tiles, but they still per­mit “reg­u­lar” col­ors in parts of Eu­rope and Asia, I be­lieve. I’m not say­ing all col­ors have to be bright, but they should be at least clas­si­fi­able. Michael Pol­lan says not to eat any­thing your grand­moth­er wouldn’t rec­og­nize as food. I say steer well clear of any col­or that can­not be im­me­di­ate­ly iden­ti­fied as such.

In a par­al­lel sto­ry, in Italy, one can or­der a piece of fruit for dessert. A nice peach, or some­thing. On a plate. Or straw­ber­ries and cream! Or with­out cream! At a real French restau­rant in France, you can get a piece of meat and some pota­toes, with­out nas­tur­tiums, car­doon, or pis­ta­chio foam on it. But what meat! What pota­toes! Not that it’s rel­e­vant, but I of­ten give meat as a gift. I al­ways box and wrap it up beau­ti­ful­ly. A bloody filet mignon or two makes a fab­u­lous birth­day present. In Amer­i­ca, we can­not leave well enough alone. In every­thing from soup plates to nut­crack­ers, the place I no­tice the yucky col­ors most is here: the real, non-New York Amer­i­ca, the Amer­i­ca I know noth­ing about and upon which I have no right to pass judge­ment.

I see them in floor tile, fab­ric, those evil, ubiq­ui­tous, stack­ing plas­tic chairs. Those things should be out­lawed. In the hideous stream­lined run­ning shoes, mold­ed plas­tic bike hel­mets, com­pli­cat­ed tooth­brush­es that look like run­ning shoes, boats and cars that look like run­ning shoes. The seats at the movie the­ater. But what the hell, us New York­ers are a snot­ty, judg­men­tal lot, and be­sides, no­body asked My Per­mis­sion to take the real col­ors away. I’m not tick­led he­liotrope. I’d like to get a glossy, opaque, non-metal­lic, cobalt blue car. I can’t even find a green sweater. Re­al­ly! Some­body find me an emer­ald green sweater. Fin­ger paint green. Please, do not men­tion your vin­tage green Comme des Gar­cons sweater with an on-pur­pose hole in it that you wore to Art Basel Mi­a­mi that you bought on eBay for only 2400 bucks. This does not count as cloth­ing. It is Fash­ion. Ac­tu­al peo­ple can’t and won’t ‑nor should they- tol­er­ate this kind of thing. Dis­qual­i­fied, I say!

Nor­mal col­ors have as­so­ci­a­tions. Mean­ings. Some sub­jec­tive con­no­ta­tions might in­clude: Pur­ple: Hip­pie, New Age, Goofy Grape, Ore­gon. The sev­en­ties. Navy: Con­ser­v­a­tives, and, of course, the Navy. France. Big Busi­ness. Red: Pos­i­tive, Com­mu­nism, Blood, Toma­toes. Fire Truck. Green: Ecol­o­gy, Grass. Mon­ey. Eco Mar­ket­ing. Gray: Age, Con­crete, In­dus­tri­al, Bore­dom, Rain, Min­i­mal­ism, Dust. Or­ange: De­signi­ness, Gay­ness, Hip­ness, The Six­ties. Hol­land. Or­anges! Pink: Lit­tle Girls, Bar­bie. Cup­cake frost­ing. Bub­blegum. Can­cer?

None of these are too far-fetched, are they? In prod­uct de­sign, there are some no­table ex­cep­tions. I love those white Macs. Un­apolo­get­i­cal­ly snowy. But the Hewlett Packard print­er is … uh, veal col­or. Sick! In re­cent years, most elec­tron­ics prod­ucts opt for a ti­ta­ni­um fin­ish, avoid­ing the col­or ques­tion al­to­geth­er. Wussies. Of course, if you’re col­lect­ing orig­i­nal Eames, and shop­ping at Vi­t­ra, there’s nary a mauve in sight. Yes, Ikea is one af­ford­able place. But even they have giv­en in to beige, a bit. And If Marc New­som de­signed your car, it’s prob­a­bly a fan­tas­ti­cal­ly le­git­i­mate col­or. I just don’t know any­body who has one.

Pan­tone had noth­ing to do with this. They just call ’em, they don’t pick ’em. Li Edelkoort had noth­ing to do with this. A pro­fes­sion­al trend spot­ter, she pre­dicts for multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions which col­ors are cool now and there­fore sell to the un­washed mass­es in the fu­ture. She asks her hip­ster friends, “What col­or do you like?” and they say, “Oh, some­thing like toma­to soup.” And sud­den­ly there’s a shiny new toma­to soup col­ored Ford Ex­plor­er in your garage. Of course you had noth­ing to do with this, dear read­er. But if you do, please come for­ward and de­clare your­self, trai­tor, so that we can dunk you in a pink­ish sauce.

For all I know, these heinous new hues are the grass­roots fa­vorites of every Amer­i­can, and right­ful­ly de­serve their de fac­to sta­tus as our true fam­i­ly val­ues. Per­haps we should re­think the flag.

Three cheers for the Rose, Veal and Teal!

 

—lau­rie rosen­wald

Flom­mist Lau­rie Rosen­wald is an Amer­i­can il­lus­tra­tor, au­thor, artist, and de­sign­er. Copy­right © 2019 Lau­rie Rosen­wald.

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