With the color brown, are we not very close to things, perhaps  too close, claustrophobic even? In this space of proximity, we are all legs and arms, hands and feet, noses and torsos. In this room of permanent oscillation, everything and everyone rubs against one another in between. Here, we are able to look over one another’s shoulders, generating heat and sweat, almost tasting the salt in the air, hearing the whispers not-yet-uttered, sensing the embraces that might form at any moment. Feeling our way through things in the midst of this brown field, do we not elide body, territory, and boundary? This zoomed-in, Full Screen space is irreducible and it is most definitely brown. 

Although the meaning and interpretation of all colors can be varied and do necessarily hinge on the context and specific conditions in which the phenomenon appears, brown is exceptional. According to scientific color studies, no two people look at color exactly alike. In fact, no two eyes even perceive it in the same way. As such, color necessitates the reconciliation of numerous variables and perspectives, first, to be perceived and, second, to be meaningful since it is often inconsistently interpreted. In other words, it is, as Josef Albers has said “profoundly relational,” and therefore, a highly complicated phenomenon that demands consensus, and, by implication, a conversation or, more likely, a series of conversations in order to transmit meaning. Thus, the meaning and language of color present a conundrum that continually needs to be worked out among us. While I wholeheartedly believe that all colors offer interesting and worthwhile problems to grapple with, I will discuss brown as an enigma among the chromatic spectrum of special cases.

Kristina Lee Podesva is the Editor & Publisher of B R U N A press + archive, which she founded in Bellingham in late 2017. She is an artist, writer, and publisher, and edited the art journal Fillip from 2005-2015. She currently teaches in the Art and Art History department at Western Washington University.

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