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
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