The Image of Thought: Achromatics in O'Keeffe and Beckett (1996)

Chromatics is study of color, or in modern times what is called spectrum. Achromatics is study of black and white as isolated or independent colors and of their own mixture which produces shades of black and white: grey. Historically, chromatics has received major attention, and has been of concern to both scientific researchers and those in arts. Achromatics, in contrast, was virtually ignored until beginning of 20th century, and most of this theorizing has focused on pictorial art and on what are to be symbolic or universal properties of black, white and grey. Indeed, much of critical discussion concerning achromatics has focused on a traditional exegesis in regard to canvases of relative late-comers such as Barnett Newman, Ad Reinhardt, and Franz Kline. Drawing from of contemporary French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze, this essay attempts to open a new epistemological space that allows alliances between achromatic painting and achromatic literature to form. In particular, I want to explore way that achromatic art and literature afford means to depicting what Deleuze calls the image of pure thought - i.e., images that attempt to escape reference and symbolization. Similarly, I wish to invoke Deleuze's use of idea of strata; a stratum is a particular way of seeing and saying that has become a historical formation, a positivity or fact. Deleuze wishes to cut through established strata: make articulable visible and make visible inarticulable. My working examples for this exploration will be achromatic works of American artist Georgia O'Keeffe and Irish writer Samuel Beckett. Before turning specifically to their works, however, I will first begin with an overview of chromatic theory in history of ideas, and discuss theoretical implications of concept of the image of thought and its interdisciplinary possibilities for a reading of art and literature. The role of theory in history of ideas and in art in West since Renaissance is so intertwined with ideology that two - and epistemology - cannot be disjoined. The dominant in philosophy and art in West has been based on Platonic notion of universal ideas or Ideal. All periods, in fact, up to Modern era have privileged Ideal in beauty and form as ultimate in artistic expression and esthetic appreciation. Chromatics, too, has been a handmaiden to Ideal, and has been mainly concerned with how serves to express symbolic or universal. At same time, however, theories of emerging from realm of science have had a great impact on art world, and indeed research in chromatics began with Newton's Opticks (1704) which relied on physics. In 1666 Newton observed refractions of light through a prism; this observation led him to formulate that white light was not simple, but rather a mixture of rays which prism separated into seven hues: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet (he also aligned them to seven planets and seven diatonic scales). Building on J. H. Lambert's pyramid model, J. C. Le Blon used colorimetry (a technique for measuring and grading spectrum) to examine elementary trichromatic base, and he eventually advanced a theory of primary colors (c. 1730). Ten years after Le Blon published his work in 1756, English engraver, Morris Harris, produced first chart with primaries in full color. Yet another scientific approach came from realm of physiology; in 1892 American physiologist, Christina Ladd-Franklin, expounded her developmental theory, arguing that vision has emerged out of an evolutionary process. In arts, a major contributor to theory was German Romantic painter, Philipp Otto Runge; his Die Farbenkugel (1810) advanced a decidedly systematic chromatic theory through its development of a color sphere. …