Chromophobia manifests itself in the many and varied attempts to purge colour from culture, to devalue colour, to diminish its significance, to deny its complexity. More specifically: this purging of colour is usually accomplished in one of two ways. In the first, colour is made out to be the property of some ‘foreign’ body – usually the feminine, the oriental, the primitive, the infantile, the queer or the pathological. In the second, colour is relegated to the realm of the superficial, the supplementary, the inessential or the cosmetic. In one, colour is regarded as alien and therefore dangerous; in the other, it is perceived merely as a secondary quality of experience, and thus unworthy of serious consideration. Colour is dangerous, or it is trivial, or it is both.

The rugged Pyrrhus – he whose sable arms,

Black as his purpose, did the night resemble

When he lay couched in the ominous horse,

Hath now his black and grim complexion smeared

With heraldry more dismal, head to foot.

Now is he total guise, horridly tricked

With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,

Baked and imparched in coagulate gore,

Rifted in earth and fire.