Riccardo Falcinelli, Cromorama, 2017

By weaving stories upon stories, and with 400 illustrations, Falcinelli tells how the modern gaze was formed, drawing on the entire universe of images: not only painting, but also literature, cinema, comics and above all everyday objects, which for the first time makes us see in a new and unusual way. All societies have built symbolic systems in which color played a central role: think of the black of mourning, the red of communism or the blue of Mary’s mantle. Whatever of extraordinary has happened in the modern world is that technology and the market have changed the way we look at things, getting used to new perceptions. Seen on a smartphone, a fresco is as bright as a digital photo. The charged and brilliant colors of the screen are now the parameter by which we evaluate the purity of each chromatic phenomenon. In short, anyone who has known the color of television can no longer see the world with the eyes of the past. We may not be aware of it, but we have the yellow of the Simpsons in mind even when faced with a Renaissance painting. Cromorama tells us how today color has become a filter with which we think about reality.