The Sixties - Colour explosion

The Forties were pretty drab, the Fifties not much better. Of preceding decades we know little except from monochrome photographs and written descriptions. The Victorian age is noted for its austerity, though there was colour in womens' elaborate dresses. There was certainly a lot of ornamentation,in furnishings and buildings, which relates to the interest in detail I referred to in the earlier post.

Artists have always brought colour into the world, but until the opening of public art galleries their offerings would only have been accessible to owners of the work, their families and guests.  Churches were quite colourfully decorated until the Puritans clamped down. But this goes beyond the scope of what I want to say.

In the Sixties colour photography became pretty much the norm. Likewise colour film, for home movies and cinema. In fact there was almost a backlash when grainy black and white was 'arty' for a while. Clothes became more colourful. The 'teddy boys' of the Fifties began this 'revolt into style' as George Melly called it, with their flamboyant dress, and the mods created their sharp styles. Hippies, later in the decade, varied from scruffy to ornate.

Colour supplements arrived with the Sunday papers. There was an eruption of posters and a craze for decorating interior walls with them. Design became a fashionable concern. New materials especially in plastics and paints enabled wider use of colour.

What I've sketched here represents the origin of today's world of HDTV, video games, online images and special-effects films, which we accept as normal.