Coloring the Western Canon
Chloe Jung '23 Class of 1954 Intern
Published by the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, 2022, 4 pages
Coloring the Western Canon examines our attitudes, not toward individual colors, but to the presence of color itself, particularly within the context of an art historical tradition shaped by Eurocentric concepts of art and beauty. Our ideas about what constitutes "good art" are influenced by the Western canon—a body of literature, music, philosophy, and art emblematic of "high culture and civilization" known as "the classics." From the ideas of Plato to the paintings of Leonardo and the writings of Shakespeare, they are the best products of Greco-Roman antiquity, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment. But who gets to decide what belongs in the canon and what does not? Who chooses the great masters?