Life & Wisdom Quote by John Barton

A poet admitting he got into color theory because a self-appointed committee made him laugh is a neat act of aesthetic judo: take the culture industry at its most officious and turn it into creative fuel. Barton isn’t dismissing color as superficial; he’s side-eyeing the machinery that tries to launder taste into authority. The “Colour Institute” stands in for a familiar modern ritual: branding dressed up as expertise, the annual decree that this shade is “in,” that shade is “out,” as if our eyes need a press release.

The line works because it holds two ideas in tension. “Intrigued with colour theory” suggests a real, almost scientific curiosity about perception, harmony, and emotion. Then “absurd pronouncements” punctures any reverence, reminding us that much of what passes for aesthetic guidance is basically fashion forecasting with a lab coat. Barton's amusement is not idle snark; it’s a poet’s alertness to the gap between lived sensory experience and the narratives institutions build around it.

Subtextually, he’s reclaiming the right to see for himself. If a committee can “decide” what colors are hot, then taste becomes policy, and art becomes compliance. The poet’s response is to treat that authority as material: the comedy of certainty, the seduction of trend language, the weird power of naming. In a culture where even color gets monetized and scheduled, Barton’s intrigue reads as resistance by attention: looking harder precisely where the world tells you not to.