ABSTRACT
This chapter considers colour in its relations and also in the wider palette of sensorial experience. It looks at the work of Mark Rothko, and progress through a series of case studies that open up the phenomenon of colour and its relations as a place for analogical connections to be made apprehensible. The anthropologist Michael Taussig presents with another perspective on Goethe’s theory of colour that reaches to the socio-historical context of trade of dyes, spices, and fabrics. Textile, known as Kodi cloth, produced on the island of Sumba, is known for its most extensive use of indigo dyes in men’s and women’s clothing. Men’s cloth in East Sumba are composed of large panelled sections suffused with geometric images of a reticulated python, dyed in a mixture of indigo and rust or indigo and white. The production of indigo dyes is secret knowledge controlled by senior women alongside other knowledge surrounding the use of general and reproductive medicines.
