Red

The Art and Science of a Colour

Spike Bucklow

• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781780235912
• eBook ISBN: 9781780236247
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Art General
• Index: Biological Sciences

Blood, rust, lava, wine—the flush of passion and the glow of approaching night—no color arrests our attention more than the color red. Today it is the flag of danger and seduction, of spirit and revolution, but throughout nearly all of human history it has held a special place in our aesthetics. In this book, Spike Bucklow brings us into the heart of this fiery hue to better understand the unique powers it has had over us. Bucklow takes us from a thirty-four-thousand-year-old shaman burial dress to the iPhone screen, exploring the myriad of purposes we have put red to as well as the materials from which we have looked to harvest it. And we have looked for it everywhere, from insects to tree resin to tar to excitable gasses. Bucklow also details how our pursuit of the color drove medieval alchemy and modern chemistry alike, and he shows us red's many symbolic uses, its association with earth, blood, and fire, its coloring of caves and the throne rooms of goddesses, as well as national flags, fire trucks, power grids, and stoplights. The result is a material and cultural history that makes one see this color afresh, beating with vibrancy, a crucial part of the human visual world.

REFERENCES

Introduction

1 Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain [c. 1136] (V, vii, 3), trans. L. Thorpe (London, 1966), pp. 171–4. Red and white flowers are not mixed by some as, for them, the combination evokes the ‘blood and bandages’ of wartime.

2 J. W. von Goethe, Elective Affinities [1809], vol. II, chap. 2, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Harmondsworth, 1978), p. 163.

3 Ibid., p. 164.

4 Ibid., vol. II, chap. 4, p. 180.

5 J. Blower, ‘Monuments and Memento Mori in Goethe’s Elective Affinities’, Future Anterior, VII/2 (2011), pp. 37–48.

6 B. Faure, The Red Thread: Buddhist Approaches to Sexuality (Princeton, NJ, 1998).

7 L. C. Jones, ‘The Evil Eye among European-Americans’, Western Folklore, X/1 (1951), p. 12.

8 Oxford English Dictionary, online version, www.oed.co.uk (2014).

9 A. Conan Doyle, ‘A Study in Scarlet’, in The Stories of Sherlock Holmes (London, 1904), vol. I, p. 45.

10 C. Ginzburg, ‘Morelli, Freud and Sherlock Holmes: Clues and the Scientific Method’, History Workshop, IX (1980), p. 12. Sigmund Freud also knew of Goethe’s red thread and referred to it in his book Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious (Redditch, 2013). See C. Ginzburg, ‘Family Resemblances and Family Trees: Two Cognitive Metaphors’, Critical Inquiry, XXX/3 (2004), p. 539.

11 P. Bayard, Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong, trans. C. Mandell (New York, 2008), pp. 30–53.

12 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on Colour, ed. G.E.M. Anscombe, trans. L. L. McAlister and M. Schättle (Berkeley, CA, 1979), p. 16e.

13 Matthew 27:28, Luke 23:11, Mark 15:17 and John 19:2.

14 M. Bimson, ‘Cosmetic Pigments from the “Royal Cemetery” at Ur’, Iraq, XLII/1 (1980), pp. 75–7; A. Lucas, ‘Cosmetics, Perfumes and Incense in Ancient Egypt’, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, XVI (1930), pp. 41–53.

15 Ovid, Rem. Am. 351, in K. Olson, ‘Cosmetics in Roman Antiquity: Substance, Remedy, Poison’, The Classical World, CII/3 (2009), p. 296.

16 Olson, ‘Cosmetics’, pp. 291–310.

17 Pliny the Elder, Natural History, Book XXVIII, chap. 28, trans. H. Rackham (London, 1968), vol. VIII, p. 77.

18 H. D. Betz, The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, Including the Demotic Spells (Chicago, IL, 1996), pp. 167–9.

19 Herodotus, The Histories, trans. R. Waterfield (Oxford, 1998), vol. II, p. 99.

20 F. Gunn, The Artificial Face: A History of Cosmetics (Newton Abbot, 1973), pp. 53–69.

21 F. E. Dolan, ‘Taking the Pencil out of God’s Hand: Art, Nature and the Face-painting Debate in Early-modern England’, PMLA, CVIII/2 (1993), pp. 224–39.

22 G. P. Lomazzo, A Tracte Containing the Artes of Curious Paintinge, Caruinge and Buildinge [1598], trans. R. Haydocke (Farnborough, 1970), p. 127.

23 L. S. Marcus, J. Mueller and M. B. Rose, eds, Elizabeth I: Collected Works, 1533–1603 (Chicago, IL, 2000), letter of 15 May 1549, p. 35.

24 A similar problem afflicted some portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds two centuries later.

25 N. Williams, Powder and Paint (London, 1957), p. 17.

26 Melissa Hyde, ‘The “Makeup” of the Marquise: Boucher’s Portrait of Pompadour at her Toilette’, Art Bulletin, LXXXII/3 (2000), pp. 453–75.

27 C. Palmer, ‘Brazen Cheek: Face-painters in Late Eighteenth-century England’, Oxford Art Journal, XXXI/2 (2008), pp. 197–213.

28 In a similar reaction against French formal gardens, the English adopted Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown and Humphry Repton’s contrived, but apparently natural, style of landscaping.

29 Williams, Powder and Paint, p. 98.

30 In fact, London’s air had been choking and sulphurous for some centuries and Elizabeth I refused to enter London in 1598 because of the stench of burning sea coal. See Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reigns of Edward VI, Mary, Elizabeth, 1547–1580, ed. R. Lemon (London, 1856), p. 612.

31 London Journal Fashions, no. 98, p. 11, cited in Williams, Powder and Paint, p. 106.

32 Williams, Powder and Paint, pp. 107–33.

33 Anon., ‘Cosmetics Not to be Rationed, Regardless of War Emergency’, Science News Letters, XXXIX/17 (1941), p. 271.

ONE Animal Reds

1 R. Fletcher, ‘Myths of the Robin Redbreast in Early English Poetry’, American Anthropologist, II/2 (1889), pp. 97–118.

2 P. de Bolla, Art Matters (Cambridge, MA, 2001), p. 2.

3 A. Chrisafis, ‘Head Two’, The Guardian, 4 July 2002, p. 1. (The head in question was from Marc Quinn’s first cast and the newspaper’s frontpage headline referred to an adjacent article on the decapitation of Margaret Thatcher’s statue, appropriately entitled ‘Head One’.)

4 V. Mazel et al., ‘Identification of Ritual Blood in African Artefacts’, Analytical Chemistry, LXXIX/24 (2007), pp. 9253–60; D. Fraser et al., ‘Characterisation of Blood in an Encrustation of an African Mask’, Analyst, 138 (2013), pp. 4470–74.

5 R. Chenciner, Madder Red: A History of Luxury and Trade (Richmond, 2000), pp. 181, 193.

6 R. de Clari, La Conquête de Constantinople, ed. P. Lauer (Paris, 1924), p. 117, cited in S. Kinoshita, ‘Animals and the Medieval Culture of Empire’, in Animal, Vegetable and Mi...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• ONE Animal Reds
• TWO Eastern Trees
• THREE Fruits of the Earth
• FOUR Mysterious Reds
• FIVE Reds for a Better Life
• SIX Brave New Reds
• SEVEN Crossing the Red Line
• EIGHT Red Meanings
• NINE Red Earth
• TEN Red Blood
• ELEVEN Red Fire
• TWELVE Red Passions
• REFERENCES
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• PHOTO ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• INDEX