Amy Winehouse (1983-2011)
I.
Black isn't merely the darkest colour. It's also the sexiest colour; the most dangerous colour.
In fact, it's more a state of mind or way of being than just an achromatic shade, as understood by artists, fashionistas, fascists and by all those for whom sensible blues and browns just don't cut it on the canvas or on the catwalk, anymore than they excite on the battlefield or in the bedroom.
The only other colour that comes close to having the erotic and evil allure of black is red and the two are often used in powerful combination. The ancient Greeks, for example, made their famous black-figure pottery by using an ingenious technique in which the figures, painted with a glossy clay slip, were set against a vivid red background.
However, whilst not wishing to denigrate erythrophiles for whom red is the king of colours, personally, like Amy - and as a thanatologist and nihilist - when the odds are stacked, I always go back to black ...
In fact, it's more a state of mind or way of being than just an achromatic shade, as understood by artists, fashionistas, fascists and by all those for whom sensible blues and browns just don't cut it on the canvas or on the catwalk, anymore than they excite on the battlefield or in the bedroom.
The only other colour that comes close to having the erotic and evil allure of black is red and the two are often used in powerful combination. The ancient Greeks, for example, made their famous black-figure pottery by using an ingenious technique in which the figures, painted with a glossy clay slip, were set against a vivid red background.
However, whilst not wishing to denigrate erythrophiles for whom red is the king of colours, personally, like Amy - and as a thanatologist and nihilist - when the odds are stacked, I always go back to black ...
II.
The sculptor Anish Kapoor, who often works with ideas of negative space and the void of non-being, has said that black is the most emotive colour - particularly that darkest form of black that is carried within each of us; not as original sin, but as what we might think of as a black hole of the self, sitting at the centre of the soul and into which we might fall and disappear at any moment.
I think this is the disconcerting truth that Kurtz discovers, to his horror, in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1899). And, arguably, it's what Heidegger is referring to when he suggests that Dasein can only grasp its own wholeness by facing up to its emptiness - i.e., to the fact that being floats upon a sea of oblivion and the ever-present possibility of no-longer-being-there [sein Nicht-mehr-dasein].
Perhaps because of this - because we are creatures not merely threatened by but born of the darkness - black is crucial within the cave paintings of early man and has remained the fundamental reality upon which so much great art continues to build, making all other colours seem dirty and inferior.
Note:
As most readers will know, the title to this post, Back to Black, is taken from the fantastic song written and performed by Amy Winehouse, produced by Mark Ronson (Island Records, 2007). The accompanying video, dir. Phil Griffin, can be watched on YouTube by clicking here.
