Color Theory and Aesthetic Gibberish

Only after enrolling in an advanced art class does one begin to understand the absurdity of art and aesthetics theories. By which I mean, as the semester winds down one recognizes the syllabus – in fact, the entire curriculum – to largely be a semiotic gallimaufry of gibberish. If that makes no sense, that’s exactly what I mean. For instance – what I consider the coup de grâce of said artistic/ aesthetic bullshit – was the requisite exposition arguing for the supremacy of whatever color one chose over the rest. Befuddled, but in need of a good grade, I complied. This is what I wrote:

How does one make a case for color, for one specific color? How does one arbitrarily decide that red is better than green or that blue is far superior to orange?

There’re probably some sort of criteria but obviously that’s something I’m not privy to. Of course if the question were, “What color do you, Joe Nyaggah, prefer?” then I’d have an answer for that: Yellow!

Shallowly though, the reason is because the color, a primary color, is very pleasing to the eye. Rothko (As much as I disagree with his artistic sensibilities) suggested that different colors evoke different emotions and the placement of certain colors in proximity to others – as my understanding of the Berlin School’s description of Gestalt theory and effect would lead me to assert – evokes strong, very strong, and complex emotions.

Mark Rothko, 1947

For me, color does more than that and so my favorite color yellow does indeed more than just evoke emotion; it makes me think. It makes me think specifically of it and this is what I think:
Yellow is a unisex color. It’s a very brilliant color that doesn’t exactly denote sex or gender in the way that pink would. It’s not a man’s color nor is it a woman’s color. That I should be comfortable of such chromatic ambiguity doesn’t speak so well of my character – but whatever.
So if the prism of color were a physical expanse of rolling hills or grassy knolls that I could run through, or better yet frolic through, I would end up inexplicably atop the hillock called yellow. How more to justify this is not commensurate with my literary or artistic abilities.

Pushed to the wall, one will say just about anything. So as much as I fulminated against the assignment vowing never to add to the artistic and aesthetic bullshit that’s already in abundance, I ended up doing just that.

Contradiction personified, is what I am.