Fire red, passion red...

Red is the color par excellence:  it’s the first kids recognise and name, it attracts us since we are young. In all cultures, it’s related to fire, and, therefore, to heat and light and to blood, life, fertility and sacrifice. Each culture adds also their own positive or negative connotations: bravery, love, hate, agression, sin or war. It’s also the color that represents all passions (good and bad ones), shame, shyness and anger. Hearts are painted in red and red roses are a love symbol.

Hot water is represented by the color red and the matches’ tips are also red.

This color is also used by the Catholic Church for all the festivities related to the Holy Spirit (such as whit Sunday and confirmations) but also to the Passion (like palm Sunday and good Friday) and to the martyr Saints, because of the spilt blood... That’s also why Christ is wearing red in all the representations from Middle Age.

Blood also explains why red is the color of war. And it also explains the name of the red planet, Mars, which is also the Roman god of war. Several armies wear red uniforms, such as the Pontifical Swiss Guard and the Buckingham Palace’s.

It was quite expensive to dye clothes red, so it always was considered as a power and high status symbol. Only noble or wealthy people were allowed to wear red clothes. Similarly, nowadays we keep red carpets for celebrities, kings and political figures. Cardinals dress in red, and so does Santa Claus (in memory of Saint Nicholas of Myra, bishop, in the times in wich bishops dressed in red instead of nowadays’ purple).

 Let’s take Van Eyck’s ‘The Arnolfini Portrait’ as example. They aren’t a noble family: they are bourgeois traders, they shouldn’t wear red. They could, anyways, have red bed clothes and, if that was the case, they had to show it in the portrait! What’s more, it was thought that red bed clothes enhanced fertility and assured well born babies. (We can see that Miss Arnolfini had been pregnant for a while already) It was thought that it shooed demons: during Middle Age, not baptised babies were covered by red sheets. Demons were also represented by red and redhead women were condemned to the stake for being witches.

To prevent illnesses, it was usual to carry red amulets, like corals or red hands. Philip Prosper was very ill when born and Velázquez painted a portrait of him being 2 years old, with his amulets and red clothes. And in the well known Little Red Riding Hood tale, she wears a red hood to shoo the forest’s danger.

It’s also the brightest color, which is mainly why it’s used in advertisements, in exam corrections, in sale announcements and in signs showing danger, like traffic signs or soccer’s red cards.

Matisse, Red Room
1908

In painting, red zones are the most outstanding ones, which is why there are not many paintings with red backgrounds. In those that do have a red background, there is no perspective, like Matisse’s.

And of course, it’s not the proper color to keep unnoticed in a party!

cristinadelrosso.com // cristinadelrosso.artproject@gmail.com 

Sources: Welsh,N.-Liebmann, C.Chr. Farben. München, Elsevier V.2004

Heller, E. Wie Farben auf Gefühl und Verstand wirken. München, Droemer V., 2000

Translation: Lorenzo Vigo

Share if you like, and don't forget to comment on the comment zone!