The Colour Purple

I. On the Excretory Origin of an Exquisite Colour

My birthstone, as an Aquarian, is amethyst. And so I have an astrological attachment to the colour purple, in all its shades. Fortunately, I like this red-blue composite colour very much and appreciate the fact that it has a fascinating history that is ultimately rooted in what Bataille terms heterogeneous matter.

For whilst many people associate purple with imperial power or sacred authority, its origin is both base and profane. Indeed, this is revealed in the etymology of the word purple, which derives from the Greek name for a dye manufactured in the classical period from a mucus secreted by the hypobranchial gland belonging to a species of sea-snail.

Although the slimy secretion is milky and colourless when fresh, it stinks and turns into a powerful, long-lasting dye - known as Tyrian purple - when exposed to the air. Distilling it was a notoriously unpleasant task in the ancient world and required either wax plugs in the nostrils or a strong stomach (or both). As the poet and cultural critic Kelly Grovier rather amusingly notes: "Though purple may have symbolised a higher order, it reeked of a lower ordure."

Not only was it a malodorous job, it was a tricky and time-consuming one. It took tens of thousands of hypobranchial glands to produce even a tiny amount of this miraculous colour which grows ever more beautiful over time - unlike other textile dyes whose lustre soon fades. Thus, naturally enough, Tyrian purple was expensive: very expensive, and soon became the colour of choice amongst kings, priests, and powerful magistrates:

"In ancient Greece, the right to clad oneself in purgative purple was tightly controlled by legislation. The higher your social and political rank, the more extracted rectal mucus you could swaddle yourself in."

Purple's discovery was also given a mythological origin, so that everyone might conveniently forget what it is and exactly where it comes from. (It was claimed that whilst Heracles was one day walking along the beach with the nymph Tyrus and his dog, the latter bit into a sea-snail, staining its mouth purple. Amused by the incident and dazzled by the colour, Tyrus subsequently requested that a garment be made for her using the same dye.) 


II. The Art of Purple

Of course, today no one knows (or cares) about any of this: purple has long since been synthesised artificially and become just another colour available to anyone who wishes to wear it. You can even get a pair of purple knickers from Primark for a fiver.

However, as Grovier points out, that's not to say that Tyrian purple has lost all its old magic; in the world of art, for example, it can still transform a canvas in a startling manner:

"When Francis Bacon resolved to reinvent Velázquez’s Portrait of Innocent X [...] he decided to recast the pontiff's vestments not as scorching scarlet as his Spanish forebear had, but as pulsating purple. The result was as quietly alarming as the mute caterwaul that howls from his subject’s tortured lips [...] as if the Pope were undergoing the excruciating disgorgement of millions of molluscs over many millennia."

It can, concludes Grovier, be regarded as "purple’s silent scream into anguished oblivion - the last gasp of a gorgeously appalling colour."

Francis Bacon: 

Study after Velázquez's Pope Francis X (1953) 

See: Kelly Grovier, 'Tyrian Purple: The disgusting origins of the colour purple', (1 August 2018), published on the BBC Culture website: click here. This is one of a series of essays on colours by Grovier. Other colours discussed with his customary brilliance include umber (the colour of debauchery), black, pink, orange, and silver. Readers who are interested in knowing more are encouraged to visit his website: kellygrovier.com