#red&blue

[atroposdiaries]

"I desire the things which will destroy me in the end."

[matanzas17]

around2000, Cuba Matanzas, Los Muñequitos de Matanzas

[matanzas17]

around2000,Cuba MATANZAS

[photographyatmit]

Blogpost #13

Derek Jarmon’s Chroma: On Seeing Red describes red as a strong color, which I agree with, and points out some interesting patterns with the color red. First off it has many contradicting meanings: love and war, heart and blood, passion and violence, and more. One aspect that I resonated with is that red is a statement color and is rarely seen naturally. I attempted to create a strong, impractical piece for the photoshop exercise. 

Rebecca Solnit’s The Blue of Distance uses the color blue to describe the feeling of being lost and uncertain in your surroundings. She uses the color blue to relate the sensations to light, water, sky, and more. While reading this piece, I imagined and felt the pure yet mystic aspects of nature on a dewy, foggy, morning. I agree that blue portrays imagery that is calming yet uncertain and mysterious. I tried to depict the calm nature aspect in the photoshop exercise.

[photographyatmit]

blogpost #13

In reading Derek Jarmon’s “On Seeing Red”, I do relate to seeing red as a pigment. I‘ve painted with acrylics and oils, and cadmium red and alizarin crimson are such strong pigments that I only need a little to make something redder. I also associate red with capitalism, with many bright red logos and packaging (Target, Supreme, and Dorito’s comes to mind) because research has shown that red is attention-grabbing and attractive. Red is also a dominant color in Chinese culture, especially for New Year’s. Decorations, lanterns, and calligraphed banners are usually red, along with the traditional dress of a qipao. I don’t relate as much to the red in flowers or in symbolizing love. I shy away from the thorniness of red roses, and I don’t particularly find it romantic.

In reading Rebecca Solnit’s “The Blue of Distance”, I do like this poetic portrayal as blue as distance. When I “feel blue”, I feel sad and melancholic. The “blueness” is distant from energy and more isolated from other people. Solnit mentions nature in relation to blueness, but apart from blue skies and once in a while the blue seas, I find green and brown a more apt color for nature. Blue is a naturally rare color in nature, and the blueness of skies is from the reflecting of light and its wavelengths. And so I do like the line on pg 38 that states “Some light does not make it all the way through the atmosphere, but scatters,” in relation to memories. 

[photographyatmit]

Blogpost #13

The color blue signifies a sense of coolness and distance. Rebecca Solnit evokes this effect of blue in her essay The Blue of Distance. Reading the essay teleports the reader back to a time when Salt Lake still had water. A scene forms in the reader's mind. The sky is clear blue with a few stars and a clear bright crescent moon just rising over the horizon. You can see the reflection of the moon in the dark blue water of the lake which extends for miles to the horizon where it meets the sky. The author is walking, not on damp sand, but in knee-deep water in the lake at night. Everything is calm like the color blue.

On the other hand, Derek Jarman’s On seeing Red evokes a mix of conflicting emotions and imagery. I guess such is the nature of the color red. It is the color of a rose and the color of war. It represents the warmth and calmness of love and the agony and aggression of the fire. As Jarman talks in the essay, it is the same red that is the color of Little Red Riding Hood as well as the color of the eyes of the wolf chasing her in the forest. I have tried to depict this conflict in the collage posted in Blogpost #14.

[photographyatmit]

Blogpost #13

"On Seeing Red" and "A Field Guide for Getting Lost" were some of my favorite readings from this semester. I enjoyed the chronology of the references to how red and blue have respectively permeated history, religion, and art, and the fragmented style of "On Seeing Red" especially reminded me of David Foster Wallace's writing.

One of the most compelling visuals for me are when Jarmon describes the red of his mother's dressing table and the pigmentation of the makeup used. On a person, red communicates anger, but at the same time it communicates passion and/or desire. In the passage about vermillion, I immediately remember the color pencil of the same name that I had used in middle school and how vibrant it was as I drew a streak across my paper.

Rebecca Solnit's essay immediately reminded me of the intensity, the sadness, the ultimate pervasiveness of blue in the introduction to Joan Didion's Blue Nights:

"You pass a window, you walk to Central Park, you find yourself swimming in the color blue: the actual light is blue, and over the course of an hour or so this blue deepens, becomes more intense even as it darkens and fades, approximates finally the blue of the glass on a clear day at Chartres, or that of the Cerenkov radiation thrown off by the fuel rods in the pools of nuclear reactors. The French called this time of day “l’heure bleue.” To the English it was “the gloaming.” The very word “gloaming” reverberates, echoes— the gloaming, the glimmer, the glitter, the glisten, the glamour—carrying in its consonants the images of houses shuttering, gardens darkening, grass-lined rivers slipping through the shadows. During the blue nights you think the end of day will never come. As the blue nights draw to a close (and they will, and they do) you experience an actual chill, an apprehension of illness, at the moment you first notice: the blue light is going, the days are already shortening, the summer is gone. This book is called “Blue Nights” because at the time I began it I found my mind turning increasingly to illness, to the end of promise, the dwindling of the days, the inevitability of the fading, the dying of the brightness."