The Multi-Colour Gothic

Students of the ancient Graeco-Roman traditions eventually become aware of the disconcerting fact that the grim and plain austerity that we associate with the "classic" is actually a residue of dusty ruins. The present author recalls his first visit to India and the shock of seeing garishly coloured statues of Vishnoo and co. where he expected something as tasteful as classical stone, and then the further shock of realising that this multi-coloured aesthetic was actually the norm in ancient Athens too. His interest in the Hindoo pantheon and Hindoo temples is in their extensive and important parallels with the Greek. The colours of a Hindoo temple are certainly confronting. But so too, we must understand, were those of the Greek temples. The Greeks loved primary hues every bit as much as the modern Hindoo. In fact, the bare "classical" aesthetic is entirely a modern invention, a confection of joyless scholars, and this applies to examples beyond the ruins of the Graeco-Roman. 

Specifically, it is also true of the Gothic. We think of the Gothic as equally plain, austere, unadorned - the brute masculinity of stone even where it is treated lightly. But actually, a Gothic building in its context was as garish and multi-coloured as a Hindoo temple or the Parthenon in its heyday. The colours have long since faded and we have forgotten. It is only when we go to somewhere like India that we are reminded - or rather, confronted - with the variegated reality of the traditional aesthetic. 

Here is a picture illustrating the contrast between the Gothic we know and the Gothic reconstructed in its original glory:

We are aghast. Why paint over all those beautiful stone surfaces? But we are wrong. Traditional tastes were quite different. Theirs was a technicolor vision of heaven. Here are closer studies of the same:

We are wrong, in any case, to associate subdued colouring with the "traditional" and primary colours and garishness with the "primitive". The traditional aesthetic, east and west, loved bright colours. It is only classical art students who have developed the bookish and altogether false notion that such colourings detract from classical sculptural and architectural forms. Realising this changes the way we see things and restores pure colour to its proper place in traditional aesthetics. 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black