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Why is the world losing color?

(www.culture-critic.com)
322 points trevin | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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crazygringo ◴[] No.43558560[source]
It's not "losing" color.

At periods when technology resulted in new color possibilities, people went overboard with color. Make all the things colorful!! Think of the technicolor sixties. And we can go back in history and see the same thing with new clothing pigments, new paint pigments.

But when everything is colorful, nothing stands out. Everything being colorful is as monotonous as everything being, well, monotone.

Modern taste is more about more neutral-colored foundations with color accents. Don't paint a whole room green -- have a gorgeous green plant that stands out all the more against its neutral background. Don't paint a whole wall orange -- have a beautiful orange-hued piece of art on the wall. It's just more tasteful to use color as one element, along with size, shape, texture, and so forth. Making it the main element in everything is just overdoing it. It's bad design.

I don't want constant "riotous color", as the article puts it, in my home, or my workplace, or while I'm driving. It's visually exhausting.

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amarcheschi ◴[] No.43558896[source]
Well, visually exhausting is something that imho happens only if you find unpleasant the colors you're seeing. The wonderful island of Burano is something I would never get tired of, yet it's so colorful.

I think that the visual exhaustion comes from the fact that the thing we see everyday are made to catch our attention and not to decorate. So ads, shits and giggles that don't really add to our experience but that catch - and drain - our attention

Then again I'd probably be fine with a super duper wallpaper like this so perhaps we won't agree on some things such as having few colorful elements https://www.photowall.com/ee/memphis-piazza-panorama-wallpap...

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1. tracker1 ◴[] No.43560224[source]
I don't hate the wall art in your example... it's not quite my taste, but it doesn't make me pull my hair out. If you look at something like the link below, I'd hate having to be anywhere near it. Busy patterns and mixes of color just feel like noise and give me (sometimes literally) a headache.

https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/vintage-bathroom-makeover-p...

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2. amarcheschi ◴[] No.43562433[source]
Ok, I don't like that mess too