The underlying theory in all of these cases is that while color is sensory, unstable, and chaotic, form is rational, stable, and pure. Once you see this bias, you begin to notice how deeply it has shaped the modern world — and how it helps explain our current retreat into colorlessness.
The modernist philosophy developed in the early 20th century helped push Western culture’s underlying suspicion of color to its extreme. For architects like Adolf Loos, color was a kind of primitive indulgence — the enemy of clarity and seriousness.In his 1910 lecture Ornament and Crime, Loos celebrated a future without decoration or color, where aesthetic purity came from form alone. “We have gone beyond ornament,” he famously declared. “We have achieved plain, undecorated simplicity.”
They shared this chart of car colors: