To many the discovery that the great monuments of antiquity were stained or painted with bright pigments has proved quite unacceptable, particularly to those with a puritanical reverence for the expression of the inherent appearance of natural materials. The facts, however, are quite clear: ‘Statuary was deeply dyed with garish pigments. The marble figure of a woman found on the Athenian Acropolis was tinctured red, green, blue and yellow. Quite often statues had red lips, glowing eyes made of precious stones and even artificial eyelashes’ (Porter, 1982). The Greek Temple from the point of view of colour was closer in feeling to the Chinese Temple, than to those pure but lifeless nineteenth century copies found in many European cities.
The love of colour survives in the modern world. The church in its vestments retains a strong link with the past symbolic use of colour while colorful vivacity occasionally breaks out in the guise of the latest Parisians or Italian fashions in women’s clothes. In the environment colour was kept alive by those not schooled in the centers of artistic excellence – the working class in the suburban home, the art of the bargee, the gypsy or fairground artist. In this spirit are the monuments to Art Deco of the late 1920s and 1930s. Such buildings as those by Wallis, Gilbert and Partners for suburban London fall neatly within this populist
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