


Since the early twentieth century, colour has been used for the purposes of improving health, well-being and safety, optimising productivity, reducing accidents, and minimising fatigue and stress. In the context of these interests, it became highly important to systematically study the reactions that colour could have on a standard subject, in order to manage and regulate the space and time of the experience, from work to leisure, education to treatment. These chromo-technics of regulation can now be studied based on one of the possible meanings of the concept of ‘biopolitics’ as proposed by Michel Foucault. The essay focuses on Italy and particularly the period between 1957 and 1964, when several initiatives dedicated to colour were implemented. These were years of strong national economic growth and increased life expectancy, giving rise to a growing wave of ‘chromophilia’. I aim to highlight several points of convergence between the dissemination of chromo-technics and Red Desert (Il deserto rosso, Michelangelo Antononi, 1964) in order to demonstrate how the film develops a subtle consideration of colour biopolitics at the centre of contemporary visual culture.



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Biopolitics of Colour in Mid-Century Italian Visual Culture: Red Desert and the ‘New Techniques of Life’
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Cinéma & Cie
Federico Pierotti
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Biopolitics of Colour in Mid-Century Italian Visual Culture: Red Desert and the ‘New Techniques of Life’
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Biopolitics of Colour in Mid-Century Italian Visual Culture:
Red Desert and the ‘New Techniques of Life’
Federico Pierotti, Università degli Studi di Firenze




Abstract

       Since the early twentieth century, colour has been used for the purposes of
       improving health, well-being and safety, optimising productivity, reducing
       accidents, and minimising fatigue and stress. In the context of these interests,
       it became highly important to systematically study the reactions that colour
       could have on a standard subject, in order to manage and regulate the space
       and time of the experience, from work to leisure, education to treatment. These
       chromo-technics of regulation can now be studied based on one of the possible
       meanings of the concept of ‘biopolitics’ as proposed by Michel Foucault. The
       essay focuses on Italy and particularly the period between 1957 and 1964, when
       several initiatives dedicated to colour were implemented. These were years of
       strong national economic growth and increased life expectancy, giving rise to a
       growing wave of ‘chromophilia’. I aim to highlight several points of convergence
       between the dissemination of chromo-technics and Red Desert (Il deserto rosso,
       Michelangelo Antononi, 1964) in order to demonstrate how the film develops a
       subtle consideration of colour biopolitics at the centre of contemporary visual
       culture.


Colour as a Biopolitical Medium

   During what Regina Blaszczyk described as the colour revolution,1 colour
gained increasing attention for its practical applications in the modernist
project of turning art into life, aesthetics into expertise. Utilising colour and
its psychological impact, it became possible to consider and plan new shared
spaces and new forms of collective life. Since the early twentieth century, new
standards, operations and procedures were developed on an experimental,
empirical or statistical basis to organise and rationalise individuals’ perceptions
through a functional use of colour. These techniques of regulation can now be
studied based on one of the possible meanings of the concept of ‘biopolitics’ as

1
    Regina Lee Blaszczyk, The Color Revolution (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012).

                                                    Cinéma & Cie, vol. XIX, no. 32, Spring 2019
                                         Federico Pierotti


proposed by Michel Foucault. As illustrated by the French philosopher, in mass
society, governmentality sciences increasingly transcend the political sphere and
move into the realm of biopolitics, dealing with issues relating to the regulation
of the subjects’ lives and bodies.2 The premise of biopolitical governmentality
is not necessarily linked to a state mechanism, rather it is apparent ‘at every level
of the social body and utilized by very diverse institutions’, with the specific aim
of ‘the investment of the body, its valorization, and the distributive management
of its forces’.3
   In this regard, colour can be regarded as a medium of biopolitical intervention
since, thanks to its psychophysiological powers, it has been able to contribute
in various forms to the rationalisation plans carried out by capitalist societies
during the twentieth century. On multiple occasions, colour has been used
for biopolitical goals, with the aim of improving health, well-being and safety,
optimising productivity, reducing accidents, and minimising fatigue and
stress. The biopolitics of colour have operated on different — yet interlinked
— levels, with the aim of defining standards and applying specific operations
and procedures. Setting standards to be used by professionals is one of the
objectives of scientific colorimetry, which takes on the task of codifying, based
on fixed rules, a potentially unstable and elusive experience such as that of
colour. Retracing the subjective dimension of colour back to psychological and
statistical regularities became one of the great epistemological questions on the
subject of colour during the twentieth century. In this regard, the introduction
of the concept of the ‘standard observer’ by the International Commission
on Illumination, within the visible colour classification system known as the
chromaticity diagram (1931), appears rather symptomatic. As emphasised by
Thomas Lemke, establishing a standard subject is a fundamental premise in a
specifically biopolitical perspective:

     The objects of biopolitics are not singular human beings but their biological features
     measured and aggregated on the level of populations. This procedure makes it possible
     to define norms, establish standards, and determine average values. As a result, ‘life’
     has become an independent, objective, and measurable factor, as well as a collective
     reality that can be epistemologically and practically separated from concrete living
     beings and the singularity of individual experience.4

     By studying these regularities, colour began to be used increasingly as a tool

2
  Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977–78, ed.
by Michel Senellart, general editors François Ewald and Alessandro Fontana (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2007); Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France,
1978–79, ed. by Michel Senellart, general editors François Ewald and Alessandro Fontana (New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
3
  Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978),
p. 141.
4
  Thomas Lemke, Biopolitics: An Advanced Introduction (New York: New York University Press,
2010), p. 5.

54
                  Biopolitics of Colour in Mid-Century Italian Visual Culture


for designing public and private spaces based on pre-determined psychological
and bodily reactions. As previously set out by Goethe in his Theory of Colors,
this potential of colour took on a more evident role in the 1910s and 1920s, in
what Anson Rabinbach called ‘the era of psychotechnics’.5 Standing behind a
functionalist and productivist ideal, a series of techniques to manage and regulate
body energy attempted to rationalise the body’s activities ‘by reducing each task
to a series of abstract and mathematically precise movements’.6 In the context
of these interests, it became very important to study systematically the reactions
that colour could have on a standard subject, in order to manage and regulate
the space and time of the experience, from work to leisure time, education to
treatment. This biopolitical interest tied in with an area of research where various
forms of technical and scientific discourse were integrated into various areas of
expertise, such as the organization of work, advertising, architecture and interior
design.7
    During the post-World War II era, the same premise was the focus of a new
wave of interest embodied in studies such as those conducted by Faber Birren in
the United States and Maurice Déribéré in France.8 It was during this period —
which Eric Hobsbawm described as the golden age of capitalism — that colour
increasingly became the focus of numerous projects, techniques and methods
aiming to rationalise and conceptualise individuals and their experiences.9
Colour is placed at the centre of a constellation of experiences which, in turn, is
part of a technological and cultural context undergoing massive change, where
it is necessary to consider the mutual correlation of three phenomena that took
shape between the 1950s and the 1960s: a) the transition from black and white
to colour in the mainstream media, facilitated by the introduction of new, faster
and cheaper technologies in film, photography, television and print; b) the
growing interest for colour in the field of industrial design, giving rise to the
production of an increasingly large number of consumer objects available in a
variety of colours; and c) the design of spaces devoted to work and leisure based
on functionalist aesthetic criteria, aimed at minimising physical and mental effort
and maximising comfort and consumption. In the post-war era, colour became a
key subject not only for major filmmakers, photographers and visual artists, but


5
  Anson Rabinbach, The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity (New York:
Basic Books, 1990), pp. 278–80.
6
  Rabinbach, The Eclipse of the Utopias of Labor (New York: Fordham University Press, 2018),
p. 166.
7
  On the subject of science of work in relation to the topic of governmentality, see also Jacques
Donzelot, ‘Pleasure in Work’, in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, ed. by Graham
Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), pp. 251–
80.
8
  See, amongst others, Faber Birren, Functional Color (New York: The Crimson Press, 1937), and
Maurice Déribéré, La Couleur dans les activités humaines (Paris: Dunod, 1955).
9
  Eric J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914–1991 (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1994), pp. 257–86.

                                                                                              55
                                           Federico Pierotti


also for specialists from industry, commerce, advertising, design and many other
areas.
   This premise encompasses several countries in the West, creating a transnational
network of techniques, practices and discourses that are still largely worthy of
study. For the specific purposes of this essay, I will focus on Italy and particularly
the period between 1957 and 1964, when several initiatives dedicated to colour
were implemented. These were years of strong national economic growth and
increased life expectancy, giving rise to a growing wave of ‘chromophilia’. Lastly,
I will concentrate on an analysis of Red Desert (Il deserto rosso, Michelangelo
Antonioni, 1964) to demonstrate how the film develops a subtle consideration of
colour biopolitics at the centre of contemporary visual culture. The phenomenon
under examination is all the more interesting where it coincides with the years
of expanding consumerism and modernization in Italy (the so-called Italian
economic miracle), and with the years that define the shift from black and white
to colour in the leading Western film industries.10 With this approach, I aim to
offer a new perception of the transition to colour in film as part of a broader
renovation that permeates the visual and material culture of the 1950s and 1960s.
A culture made up of a complex set of media, technology, forms of knowledge,
discourse and modes of social organisation.


Chromo-Technics in Post-war Italian Visual Culture

   ‘Colour [...] is not only an aesthetic element to be used indiscriminately, but
is primarily an energy that affects a large part of our physical and mental well-
being, with implications on social issues, productivity and safety.’11 These words,
appearing in 1959 in the second issue of the specialized periodical Colore: Estetica
e logica, paved the way for a biopolitical project which was to be carried out by the
upcoming Centro Italiano di Studi per l’applicazione del colore (Italian Centre
for the Study of the Application of Colour). Inspired by the Centre d’information
de la Couleur founded in 1951 in Paris by Maurice Déribéré and the physiologist
Yves le Grand, the equivalent Italian centre, directed by the artist Mario Ballocco,
aimed to gather documentation on international experiences to promote its own
experimental studies and research, to serve as a networking and dissemination
body, and lastly to offer advice to public and private bodies. Its objectives were
ambitious, although its actual impact would be rather limited. The establishment
of this centre — the history of which is yet to be reconstructed — is symptomatic
of an interest in colour which manifests itself through a coordinated series of
activities during those years.


10
   Richard Misek, Chromatic Cinema: A History of Screen Color (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell,
2010), pp. 41–64.
11
   ‘Il Centro Italiano di Studi per l’applicazione del colore’, Colore: Estetica e logica, 2.2 (1959), 10
(my translation).

56
                   Biopolitics of Colour in Mid-Century Italian Visual Culture


   Between 1957 and 1960, the four editions of Italy’s national colour convention
were held in Padua, where scientists, engineers, architects, planners, designers
and specialists from various fields came together to discuss the features and
uses of colour in the spaces and practices of social life. Leading to a series of
publications, the issues addressed included colour in the human environment,
colour and safety, colour in schools and, lastly, colour in advertising, printing,
packaging and commercial settings.12 This was not the only important initiative
dedicated to colour; in 1958, the Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnica
in Milan hosted a Colour Exhibition, held by Mario Ballocco in collaboration
with designers Enzo Mari and Bruno Munari.13 The exhibition featured sections
devoted to physical optics, physiology, psychology, chemistry and technology. The
exhibition was held in a large L-shaped room with fifty stands, the first of which
illustrated the physical, perceptive and chemical aspects of colour, while the
following ones were dedicated to examples and applications in practical settings
(homes, workplaces, hospitals and healthcare institutions, schools, industries).
Other stands also exhibited samples of the colouring materials produced by the
participating companies, including the two main national producers of paints
and varnishes, Colorificio Italiano Max Meyer and Duco-Montecatini.
   In line with what was happening in the United States and France during these
years, new magazines were appearing, devoted to the study of colour, while
already existing magazines addressed a growing interest in issues relating to
psychology and the functionality of colour. Particular attention should be paid
to the above-mentioned magazine Colore: Estetica e logica, published between
1957 and 1964, which took a multidisciplinary approach to address a wide range
of issues relating to the theory, physiology, psychology and psychotechnics of
colour. The work incorporated most of the studies and research being conducted
in Italy and abroad at the time. In addition to the interventions by the editor
Mario Ballocco, the magazine included translations of texts by Faber Birren and
other foreign scholars, as well as articles devoted to colour in interior design,
furnishings, architecture, schools, places of work, shops, in the street, in fashion
and all spheres of public and private life.
   Since it is not possible to go back over all of the reflections and experiments
mentioned in the context of these initiatives and publishing projects, I will limit
myself to examples that demonstrate Italy’s desire to experiment with the theories
and techniques coming from abroad. I will focus particularly on the areas of
medical, educational and industrial applications of colour. With regard to the
former, some Italian architects — working closely with doctors — began to set

12
   Atti ufficiali del 1° e 2° Congresso nazionale del colore: il colore nell’ambiente umano; colore e
sicurezza (Padua: Il messaggero di S. Antonio, 1959); Atti del 3° Congresso nazionale del colore:
il colore nella scuola (Padua: Il messaggero di S. Antonio, 1960); Atti del 4° Congresso nazionale
del colore: il colore nella pubblicità, il colore nella stampa, il colore nella confezione, il colore
nell’ambiente di vendita (Padua: Il messaggero di S. Antonio, 1961).
13
   ‘La prima Mostra del colore al Museo della scienza e della tecnica’, Colore: Estetica e logica, 2.2
(1959), 10, 39.

                                                                                                   57
                                           Federico Pierotti


up care centres using chromo-technical principles. The architect Daniele Calabi,
speaking at the first national congress of colour, recalled that when designing the
psychiatric clinic in Padua, two special rooms were set up for children affected
by tetanus. The rooms were north-facing, with small windows and screens to
ensure constant darkness; the walls, ceiling, doors and beds had been painted
deep blue and violet. The designer reported how the doctors discovered that
convulsing children calmed down when moved into these rooms.14
   In the domain of education, this period saw the spread of a series of toys and
tools used for sensorial education. Several Italian schools began to use the rods
created by Belgian mathematician Georges Cuisenaire, which involved teaching
mathematics with ten lengths of rulers, each in a different colour, corresponding
to the numbers one to ten. In some technical institutes, games were introduced
that utilised colour’s ability to facilitate the learning of basic concepts. One
example is the ‘chemistry game’, where colour was used to distinguish the
various chemical compounds that can be obtained. The use of such tools was
undoubtedly facilitated by the growing dissemination of coloured papers and
boards, plastic blackboards, toys, musical instruments and similar objects sold
for educational purposes.15
   However, it was the industrial sector that was most influenced by international
research on colour conditioning in terms of health and safety as well as occupational
fatigue and workers’ productivity.16 After the national establishment of a new
public safety law (DPR 547/1955), a special commission set up by the National
Agency for the Prevention of Injuries collaborated between 1955 and 1956 with
major Italian industries (such as Fiat, Montecatini, Edison, Sip, Finmeccanica
and Pirelli) to establish a standard for security signage. The chosen colours were
yellow-orange for danger, red for prohibitions and obligations, and green for
other indications.17 In the same years, many Italian industries (Pirelli, Snam,
Marelli, Olivetti) started researching and experimenting on the functional use
of colour in workshops, which were supposed to have ‘a favourable influence
on the workers’ physical and mental factors and, in turn, considerable economic
advantages’.18
   In this area of industrial activity, a leading role was played by the Italian
company Colorificio Italiano Max Meyer, which took part — to a greater or
lesser extent — in almost all of the initiatives mentioned above. The same
company also provided the paints used to decorate the rooms and scenes for the


14
   Daniele Calabi, ‘Lo studio del colore negli edifici per l’assistenza’, in Atti ufficiali del 1° e 2°
Congresso nazionale del colore, pp. 167–79.
15
   Pia Albertazzi Bossi, ‘Il colore nei sussidi didattici’, in Atti del 3° Congresso nazionale del colore,
pp. 127–35, 283–85.
16
   On the concept of ‘color conditioning’ and its applications in the United States, see Blaszczyk,
pp. 215–40.
17
   Cesare Commini, ‘Il colore per le segnalazioni di sicurezza’, in Atti ufficiali del 1° e 2° Congresso
nazionale del colore, pp. 369–82.
18
   ‘La psicologia del colore nell’industria’, Colore: Estetica e logica, 3.3 (1960), 40 (my translation).

58
                   Biopolitics of Colour in Mid-Century Italian Visual Culture


production of the film Red Desert, as noted in the film credits. For several years,
the paint factory opened a programme called ‘Colour and Function’. This was
directed by Andrea Cecchetti, who had the opportunity to explore topics relating
to functional colours in the United States. In an article published in 1961 in a
specialized magazine, he wrote: ‘to avoid the distractions of unnecessary colour
contrasts, the pipes are camouflaged in the same colour as the background surface
on which they are applied or projected, using colour to identify the critical points
with rings (entry and exit from the room, valves, shutters, diversions, etc.)’. 19 In
the same article, Cecchetti specified that:

     All products to be used for functional colours [...] should be brushed and not shiny,
     to avoid any unnecessary visual strain. There are many clear examples from American
     literature in this regard, but in Italy too there were significant improvements in
     productivity and accident prevention, with the introduction of functional colours at
     the workplace.20

   As part of the programme, the ‘Energicolor’ (fig. 1) method had just been
launched, with a six-colour system to be used for pipes (blue, red, green, yellow,
violet, brown) and the respective materials put into them (air, steam, water, gas,
acids and gases, oils and various liquids), so that the workers could quickly
recognise the function of each conduit without straining their eyes.
   The role of companies producing dyes, paints and colourants should not be
underestimated in these processes. In this same period, an increasing availability
of colour in mass culture also relates to the material culture, thanks to the spread
of new raw materials. In the wake of the American trend of do-it-yourself, also
in Italy the sale of easy-to-use paint that could be applied by just about anyone
was the basis of advertising campaigns encouraging consumers to repaint their
homes, using psycho-technical principles in line with new and updated criteria of
taste. An interesting example is Ducotone, a new paint produced by Montecatini,
which was the subject of a press, cinema and television advertising campaign,
highlighting both the hygienic qualities of the material (bacteria and mould
resistant) as well as its ability to reinvent the perception of the domestic space.
In colour shorts produced by Ferry Mayer, intended for cinema (La primavera
in casa, Invito al Ducotone, Amleto Fattori, 1960), the speaker praises the
psychological qualities of a spontaneously coloured space, stating that ‘Ducotone
colours relax, rejoice, comfort and rejuvenate’, while the images at the same time
show a series of domestic interiors with walls painted in different variants. The
brand shows viewers a range of 32 different colours, accompanied by a table
of colour arrangements to guide the consumer in choosing the most effective
colour, to strike a balance between functionality and aesthetics.


19
   Andrea Cecchetti, ‘Il colore nell’industria. La colorazione funzionale nell’industria’, Homo faber,
11.104–5 (1960), 6779–80 (p. 6780, my translation).
20
   Ibid.

                                                                                                   59
                                  Federico Pierotti


                                                          Fig. 1: Colorificio Italiano
                                                          Max Meyer’s Energicolor
                                                          System. Advertisement
                                                          from Colore: Estetica e
                                                          logica, 2.2 (1959).




  Whilst colour was used to support functionality based on efficiency, well-
being and consumer culture, cinema also had to realign itself within this same
project, exploring the functional and subjective capacity of colour, while at
the same time, marking out its boundaries, contradictions and aporias. In this
regard, colour films gave rise to new opportunity for reflection on the various
ways of inhabiting a world that was changing its visible skin as colour took on
new meanings and functions.


A Biopolitical Film: Red Desert

  A film where the biopolitical dimension of colour is explicitly addressed is Red
Desert. The film approaches colour as an aesthetic, anthropological and social
problem, prompting the viewer to reflect on the ways in which it was reshaping
the spheres of experience. Within this visual and material culture, Red Desert

60
                   Biopolitics of Colour in Mid-Century Italian Visual Culture


sheds light on several aspects of mid-century colour, which have thus far not
been sufficiently considered in the many analyses of the film.21 Several writings,
interviews and other evidence show that Antonioni was deeply interested in the
considerations and studies on the psychology of colour and psychotechnics.
These promoted what the director called the ‘new techniques of life’22 in an
interview with Jean-Luc Godard published on Cahiers du cinéma (November
1964). Red Desert is full of clues which — in an almost surreptitious and hidden
way — hint at a series of changes to how colour was being used and thought
about in Western society.
    Antonioni never chooses the path of direct reflection, but rather seems
interested in understanding — through sometimes almost imperceptible allusions
— the way colour was redesigning the spaces of public and private life, as well
as the behaviours and psycho-physiological states of the people living in those
spaces. These considerations are developed in the film through its emphasis on
the psychological impact of colour and its functionality within the industrialised
and consumer society. Through the pathological state of its protagonist Giuliana,
the film reveals the complexity of the integration between these two levels. The
film thrives on a constant tension between the way colours appear to have been
designed in the diegetic world (often in accordance with the principles developed
in the field of psychotechnics) and the reactions they provoke in Giuliana (and, less
frequently, in other characters, such as her son Valerio and the engineer Corrado).
    The film shows the viewer a milieu which appears to be designed to organise
the sensory elements, while at the same time it highlights the aporias and
contradictions that make this same milieu traumatic for the characters who inhabit
it. Studies on the impact of colour cut across contemporary practices and media
and also make it necessary to reconsider the aesthetic boundaries and potential
of colour. Various moments in Red Desert feature spaces and environments
where colours appear to be designed and distributed with a functional approach.
The interiors of the factory are central to one of the opening scenes with Ugo,
Corrado and Giuliana. The pipes and machinery reveal the presence of one of
the canonical examples of the application of functional colour (fig. 2), as shown
by Max Mayer’s Energicolour programme and the other examples mentioned



21
   See, amongst others, Angela Dalle Vacche, Cinema and Painting: How Art Is Used in Film (London:
Athlone, 1996), pp. 43–80; Peter Brunette, The Films of Michelangelo Antonioni (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 90–108; Céline Scemama, Antonioni. Le Désert figuré
(Paris: l’Harmattan, 1998); Sandro Bernardi, Il paesaggio nel cinema italiano (Venezia: Marsilio,
2002), pp. 180–88; Murray Pomerance, Michelangelo Red Antonioni Blue: Eight Reflections on
Cinema (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), pp. 70–110; Luca Venzi, ‘Colore’, in
Lessico del cinema italiano. Forme di rappresentazione e forme di vita, ed. by Roberto De Gaetano
(Milan: Mimesis, 2014), pp. 199–202.
22
   Michelangelo Antonioni, ‘The Night, the Eclipse, the Dawn’, in The Architecture of Vision:
Writings and Interviews on Cinema, ed. by Marga Cottino-Jones (New York: Marsilio Publishers,
1996), pp. 287–97 (p. 290).

                                                                                               61
                                         Federico Pierotti




                Fig. 2: Red Desert (Il deserto rosso, Michelangelo Antonioni, 1964).


above. Antonioni himself was interested in these subjects, of which he shows a
clear awareness on several occasions:

     When, around the turn of the century, the world began to industrialize, factories were
     painted neutral colours — black or grey. Today, however, most of them are brightly
     painted. Even our water pipes, electricity cables, and heating systems are coloured.
     Behind this invasion of colour lie technical causes, but also psychological ones. The
     walls of the factories are coloured not red, but light green or pale blue — the so-called
     ‘cool’ colours, for workers to rest their eyes.23

   From the beginning, the deep conflict between these functional colours
and Giuliana’s character becomes apparent. In the first sequence of the film,
we see her wandering first with her son Valerio, then alone, and then with
Ugo and Corrado, in and outside the factory grounds. All of the spaces she
passes, from the bleak and grey industrial setting to the brightly coloured
area with the machinery and pipes, are experienced as an assault on her
body and senses. This creates a rift between the functional space and her
experiential environment. Giuliana is quite clearly a pathological subject, a
clinical case, who always over-, or under-reacts to her surrounding stimuli.24
Particularly noteworthy in this regard is a statement by Antonioni’s assistant

23
  Michelangelo Antonioni, ‘Red Desert’, in The Architecture of Vision, pp. 283–86 (p. 284).
24
  On this point, see Ruggero Eugeni, ‘La modernità a disagio. Michelangelo Antonioni e la cultura
psichiatrica italiana tra gli anni Cinquanta e gli anni Sessanta del Novecento’, in Michelangelo
Antonioni. Prospettive, culture, politiche, spazi, ed. by Alberto Boschi and Francesco Di Chiara
(Milan: Il Castoro, 2015), pp. 49–68.

62
                   Biopolitics of Colour in Mid-Century Italian Visual Culture


Carlo Di Carlo (included in the script published in 1964), which suggests that
‘when establishing the protagonist’s character, Antonioni acted as if she were
constantly facing a colour test [...]; a method which facilitated the investigation
into her personality using the most advanced techniques in psychological and
psychiatric practices’.25 For several decades, the literature on psychology and
colour therapy drew attention to the particular reaction to colour of neurotic
and psychotic patients: attention problems, impaired sensation, changes in
body temperature, fatigue, hallucinations.26 As stated in an article of the time,
‘the influence of colour […] is much more pronounced in neurasthenic and
psychopathic individuals’.27 Giuliana — and, at times, Valerio and Corrado
— show heightened reactions which seem to be evoked by colour or other
sensations of vision, hearing, touch and taste.
   The violence of the sensations experienced in the factory, in the sequence
mentioned above, continues to influence the following scene in which Giuliana
wakes up with a start in the middle of the night and looks for a thermometer to
take her temperature. She then moves to her son’s bedroom (where a mechanical
robot, left turned on, keeps moving back and forth), before finally flopping
over a chair on the landing. The three rooms the woman enters are designed
according to the principle of taste distinctions (suggested by the elegant set and
furnishings) converging with the principle of psychotechnical rationality (such as
the wall leading to the bedroom, painted blue, a colour associated with rest). In
this space, designed for comfort and well-being, Giuliana shows a similar physical
discomfort to that shown in the unfamiliar factory environment. As noted by
the director himself, there is a clear gap between her and her husband Ugo:
‘Giuliana cannot adapt to the new “way” of life and goes through a crisis, while
her husband is content with his lot in life.’28 Whilst, in the previous sequence, the
factory is experienced by Ugo as a very familiar space, almost an extension of his
domestic environment, likewise, Giuliana sees her house as an extension of the
factory, one of aggression on the senses, fatigue and confusion.
   In terms of the sets and costumes, this first sequence in the apartment plays
with a chromatic harmony created by a series of soft, relaxing colours: white, off-
white, beige and browns, as well as the blue wall. The interplay of perspectives,
camera movements and editing creates constant conflicts of lines, volumes and
colours, deconstructing every idea of harmony
                                            ​​         and destroying the unity of the
domestic sphere. In the frame where Giuliana comes out of her room, the blue
railing is filmed as if it were a factory pipe, while the repetitive motion of the robot
hints at the incessant machinery work of the technological world. In the other

25
   Carlo Di Carlo, ‘Il colore dei sentimenti’, Il deserto rosso di Michelangelo Antonioni, ed. by Carlo
Di Carlo (Bologna: Cappelli, 1964), pp. 27–35 (p. 33, my translation).
26
   Faber Birren, Color Psychology and Color Therapy: A Factual Study of the Influence of Color on
Human Life (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1950).
27
    ‘Il colore è necessario al malato e al medico’, Colore: Estetica e logica, 3.5 (1960), 41 (my
translation).
28
   ‘Red Desert’, p. 284.

                                                                                                    63
                                       Federico Pierotti


sequences set inside the home, protection and intimacy are constantly under
threat from enormous passing vessels which can be seen from the long horizontal
windows: what already seems like a home-factory also becomes somewhat of a
home-port.
   In this hybrid home environment, the child, Valerio, also suffers from
a pathology that proves to be of a psychosomatic nature, when he seems not
to be able to walk: a reaction due to an accumulation of stress caused by the
overstimulation of the surrounding environment. His bedroom, it is worth
remembering, is full of the sensory education tools mentioned in the pedagogical
literature recalled above. To distract the child, and to dispel the fear gripping her,
Giuliana — as can be read in the published script — ‘takes a piece of chalk at
random like a robot, and draws a circular purple shape, seemingly meaningless,
vaguely resembling a spiral’,29 then traces a vertical sign with the yellow chalk.
Whilst the complementary combination of purple and yellow seems to express the
woman’s unconscious need for unity and harmony, the shapes she draws reveal a
state of anxiety, fear and vertigo. Having moved away from the blackboard, she
approaches Valerio and gently caresses him; she begins to tell him the story of
the girl on the island, encouraging him (and herself) to imagine a world where
colours and sound seem to belong to an earlier stage of human evolution.
   The pathologies uniting the mother and son (who are — not incidentally —
the two characters with which the film opens and closes) appear to be due to an
adaptive difficulty in an evolutionary process brought about by the accelerated
pace of industrial society and its new biopolitical way of organising sensory
elements. Giuliana and Valerio are like the birds mentioned by Giuliana at the
end of the film, as she explains to her son that they have learned to avoid going
through the yellow, poisonous smoke to preserve their existence. Similarly, the
two characters must acknowledge a new way of approaching and organising
colour within consumer and mass society where — unlike the imaginary world
of the island — the artificial and the natural can no longer be truly distinguished
from one another. It is this adaptive and evolutionary path that Giuliana strives
towards throughout the film in an attempt to engage, as explained by her husband
to Corrado using his familiar mechanical lexicon (‘and the gears still don’t quite
mesh’ [‘e ancora non riesce a ingranare’]). Yet, it is an exhausting journey: in
the famous sequence with the barrow containing fruit painted grey, Giuliana
says that she is ‘always tired’, before correcting herself, ‘... no ... not always ...
sometimes’, as if she herself somehow wanted to conceal her psychological and
physical fatigue.
   Whilst the diegetic environments are built according to the subjects who
inhabit and interact with them in order to minimise fatigue and maximise
comfort and productivity, Giuliana proves unable to have standard reactions
within these environments. In this regard, the scene of the little red room inside


 Michelangelo Antonioni, Tonino Guerra, ‘La sceneggiatura’, in Il deserto rosso di Michelangelo
29

Antonioni, pp. 85–145 (p. 134, my translation).

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                   Biopolitics of Colour in Mid-Century Italian Visual Culture


the shack is an extreme case. Red, stressed by psychology for its ability both to
attract attention and arouse the senses, becomes the subject of one of the film’s
longest sequences. Antonioni himself stated that he would have never filmed the
episode in a black-and-white film:

     For example, in the scene in the hut where they are talking about drugs and stimulants,
     I couldn’t not use red. In black and white it would never have worked. The red puts
     the viewer into a state of mind that allows him to accept such dialogues. It’s the right
     colour for the characters — who, in turn are justified by the colour — and also for
     the viewer.30

   Whilst red serves as an element of intensification and excitation, as shown
by the words and gestures of the characters; on the other hand, its prolonged
presence overturns its function, transforming it into an element of fatigue.
Between the first and second part of the long episode, an ellipsis suggests that all
of the characters (except Giuliana and Corrado) fall asleep, having come down
from the initial phase of excitement (suggestive games and erotic conversations).
   In the sequence where Corrado outlines his plan to set up a business in
Patagonia, at one point his attention begins to drift towards a few scratches on
the wall of the shed, the green hills of the carboys, and the blue frame painted
on the white wall. A series of camera movements — similar to the POV shots
— demonstrate the power of colour to create a state of perceptual suspension,
where attention is diverted away from a psycho-technical task (listening and
responding to the workers’ questions), losing itself in shapes and colours. The
sequence takes on a strong reflective value, to the extent that the relationship
between colour and attention was one of the key themes of psychotechnics,
in line with the considerations made by physiology and psychology since the
nineteenth century. In mass society, establishing a discipline on attention had
become a key issue. The modern subject has been increasingly defined based on
the ability to pay attention, that is to say, the ability to isolate a limited number
of stimuli within a broader field of perception.31 In the context of mobile and
distracted perception, psychotechnical studies had often assessed the role of
colour as a key factor of engaging attention. The relationship between colour
and attention was now considered central to various fields, such as advertising,
sales and safety in the workplace.
   Another sequence that calls into question the psychotechnical research on
colour of the time is the one set in the future shop (a very particular shop with
no storefront, on an almost deserted street). As soon as she comes through the
door, heading towards the opposite wall, Giuliana expresses to Corrado that she
is undecided about which colours to choose to paint the interior walls: ‘maybe


30
  ‘The Night, the Eclipse, the Dawn’, p. 295.
31
  On the subject of attention, see Jonathan Crary, Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle,
and Modern Culture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999).

                                                                                                65
                                           Federico Pierotti


light blue is better’ [‘forse è meglio celesti’] for the walls, ‘and green for the
ceiling’ [‘e il soffitto verde’], because ‘they’re cool colours that mustn’t clash’
[‘sono colori freddi che non dovrebbero disturbare’], only to reveal she had not
yet decided which products to sell. In the interview with Godard mentioned
above, Antonioni remarks on the sequence:

     We had to choose between warm and cool tones. For her shop, Giuliana needs cool
     colours because they show off better the things she has to sell. Against a wall painted
     bright orange, the things would be drowned out, while against a pale blue or green the
     objects would stand out without being overwhelmed. I was interested in the contrast
     between cool and warm colours; there was orange, yellow, a brown ceiling — and
     Giuliana realizes that for her it is no good.32

   Although this is a short passage in the film which does not appear to be of
great importance, it is revealing. Indeed, Giuliana highlights her full awareness
of living in a world that is increasingly organised around the principles of
functional colour. The subject of colour in the retail environment was one of
the most debated topics in the texts and events referred to above.33 The female
character is encouraged here to step into the shoes of an interior designer, to
organise and design a way of regulating the sensorial experience of the future
shop’s potential customers.
   In summary, through the pathological conditions of Giuliana, Valerio and
Corrado respectively, the film reveals the conflict between a biopolitical concept
of the subject, according to which the human being is regarded as the recipient
of a series of ‘techniques of life’ and the concept that they themselves seek to
embody, based on the singularity and irreducibility of the experience. Essentially,
each of the three characters proves unable to carry out the psychotechnical
tasks they are required to perform: choosing suitable colours for the sales area
(Giuliana); learning through sensory education tools (Valerio); finding labour for
his business project (Corrado). For them, what is at stake in achieving these tasks
is a biopolitical action of treatment, rehabilitation and integration within society.
   In this study on colour in mid-century Italian visual culture, I set out to
highlight several points of convergence between the dissemination of chromo-
technics and Red Desert, on the assumption that colour can be regarded as a
biopolitical tool. At the end of this process, in which I have attempted to
develop some interpretative and analytical hypotheses, two further clarifications
are necessary. Firstly, although Italian chromo-technics regarded the whole of
society as its field of intervention, its impact ultimately proved rather limited
in time. Their greatest success sprang from the growing circulation of new
materials, coloured objects and colour images and served to regulate their social

32
  ‘The Night, the Eclipse, the Dawn’, pp. 294–95.
33
  See Giorgio Paini, Andrea Cecchetti, ‘Il colore nei punti di vendita’, in Atti del 3° Congresso
nazionale del colore, pp. 273–78; ‘Il colore elemento di vendita’, Colore: Estetica e logica, 3.3 (1960),
34–35.

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                Biopolitics of Colour in Mid-Century Italian Visual Culture


dissemination during the period of the economic miracle and cinema’s shift from
black and white to colour. Already in the mid-1960s, the interest in colour could
be seen in increasingly specialized areas, thereby losing the generalist dimension
typical of the ‘chromophilia’ phase mentioned in this essay. The group of
activities discussed here — primarily in the period between 1957 and 1964 —
either disappeared or broke off into a large number of separate initiatives.
   Secondly, it should be noted that my proposed method of analysis of a single
film deserves to be tested on a larger body. However, by selecting a single case,
I have highlighted the particular and paradigmatic nature of Red Desert as a
biopolitical film. The choice of this film has allowed me to demonstrate its strong
link to the visual and material culture of the time, beyond its artistic-cultural
context. As such, I offer an alternative vision of the film by showing how it can
be viewed from a bottom-up perspective, so to speak. Whilst the pictorial and
artistic dimension is undoubtedly significant, it remains in itself insufficient to
tease out the full richness of the film.




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