Was red the first color your eye recognized while growing up? In the cosmos of colors, none is richly layered in cultural symbolism and suggestion as to the color of love, heat, excitement, and anger: namely red. No other color implies as many semiotic meanings and inspires as many emotions. I had visited the Cincinnati Art Museum in Ohio once, where they had exhibited a red extravaganza called – ‘Seeing Simply Red.’
In the museum’s Closer Look Gallery, forty artists had explored the color of fervor and insurgence. The exhibit’s roughly sixty artworks – photo and print media, differed wildly, demonstrating the seductive color’s everlasting appeal and magnetism. Here, the art lovers discovered why red is essential, how it is used in other cultures, how it is made, and what it means. Visitors also found photos of objects such as red mailboxes in China, a pink pig, and a snake. Descriptions of the pieces served as visual cues by artists showcasing what they were trying to accomplish in their artwork. In some cases, why they chose to use the color red instead of another color was also clearly explained.
Like any group show of loosely related work, the art in ‘Simply Red‘ was uneven in quality, touching many thematic nerves. It could be said that the central focus was elusive: The eyes were literally overwhelmed by the experience of so much red. Interestingly, though, all these works that used and mused on color red shared at least one idea, one that bound many traditions of art. One moment the viewer was looking at New York photographer Paula Gillen’s portrait of a young red sweatered woman lounging on a red couch with her cat. Minutes later, the eyes moved upon the painterly equivalent: the late Ralph Rosenborg’s 1958 oil painting of flowers. His art was a confection of swirling black and orange-red heaped upon the canvas as thick as frosting on a cake. Sometimes red was seen as merely a flash of quirky life, a constructing color, akin in Joe Biel’s pastel-and-graphite drawings of a man wearing a red shirt and sporting a long squiggly tongue. Sometimes it was a wash of meditative tension, as in Thompson’s golfers walking the imaginary links of an abstract, red grapefruit-tinged color field.
I really enjoyed the experience of the color red in the gallery’s ‘Education Center’ which offered families interactive ‘Inside Red.‘ Upon entering the room, I was surrounded by red, which made me question, ” How does this make me feel?”. Interestingly available in the exhibition was also an opportunity for children to make rose-colored glasses and collage using red pieces of paper. Kids could also browse red books and watch the film -Red Balloon’. At ‘Inside Red‘ you even got a chance to learn fun facts about red in different cultures as well as red’s association with different foods, scents, and textures.
Ultimately any painting or photography, blue, green, or red, it’s all about beauty and mystery. Supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, this unique exhibition, free to the public, surely drenched me in simply red!
Life Is Like That! 