‘The colour purple’
Figure 6. Kurt Cobain, ‘Purple blood’ (1993). Source: http://mermaidsonwheelchairs.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/paintings‐by‐kurt‐cobain.html.
In spite of Pliny’s efforts to anchor purple back in its fishy provenance, and imperial efforts to bind the colour to the emperor’s formal insignia, ‘purple’ had in fact long been a highly versatile category of colour. From Homer onwards, Greek and Latin literature – particularly poetry ‐ had exploited the categories porphureos and purpureus to describe things as diverse as blood, blushes, grapes, gems, marbles, flowers, even swans and rainbows: things that were far‐removed from sea‐purple dye. In a sense, then, it had already developed an identity as an abstract colour category. However, to understand these manifold references as abstract descriptions of things that shared similar wavelengths with sea‐purple dye (as we might do with our colour 'purple') is to ignore the underlying connections that existed between the colour category and all the physical, economic and political properties of the material to
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