Out of the Blue and Into the Pink

^Still from "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" 1953, 20th Century Fox (source)

Exclusively for Saturated Space, Courtney Coffman writes about the 'colour that shall not be named', the luminous prancing preening painted fleshy omnipresent elephant in architecture's proverbially very white, abstracted and empty room...

"Culturally known as the most kitsch and taboo colour, pink has been making a recent appearance in contemporary architecture. At present, the history of pink in its use in architecture and art has been theorized and recognized by few, yet the use of pink elicits modalities of affect. Moving beyond the confines of domesticity and feminine spaces, pink may be claiming new disciplinary territories but there remains a self-consciousness as many practitioners restrict its application to interior-specific conditions. Yet, when pink does move into an exterior condition, the project remains domestic in scale. From book covers, installations, interiors, pop-up shelters and objects du jour, it seems fitting that pink is saturating contemporary discourse as the colour itself oscillates between natural and artificial, flesh and mechanization, innocence and sexuality. More definitive than the themes pink embodies is the specific hue of pink in contemporary work: magenta. Perhaps magenta is the new-and-improved cathode ray blue, despite its appropriation to novelty and popular culture."

Please either use the embedded reader below or click HERE to read the text.