The Meaning of the Colour Purple
Introduction
Historically, purple is a very expensive and rare colour, and is currently only used in the flags of five nations across the world. The colour is only used as a minor detail, and this is because of the colour’s history of rarity and exclusivity. Purple is the mix of red and blue, and according to colour theory, it is considered a cool colour.
The English word purple comes from Old English: purpul, which can be traced to the Latin word purpura, which, in turn, derives from the word porphura from Greek. There are many different idioms and expressions that make use of the colour purple. Some include:
Purple Prose - Pretentious or unnecessarily embellished writing.
Born into purple - Someone born into a life of wealth and privilege.
Purple squirrel - A job candidate with the right education, experience and qualifications. The perfect candidate is as rare as a purple squirrel.
Purple Haze - A State of mind induced by psychedelics, especially LSD.
Purple Patch - A period of exceptional success or good luck.
At least two of these expressions are derived from the importance of purple in the Byzantine Empire and its culture. The rulers of the Byzantine Empire would wear purple, and their children would be ‘born in the purple’. Bishops within the Byzantine Empire would wear a purple patch on their costume as a symbol of rank, and even to this day, purple is an important colour within a lot of different Christian denominations, where the colour is a symbol of royalty.
The colour purple within culture is often associated with rarity, luxury, ambition, prestige, royalty, as well as piety, magic and mystery. On the other hand, the negative associations with purple are often vanity, extravagance, artificiality, materialism and pride. Its association with the artificial is because it’s a major colour that is very rarely found in nature, and it was also the first colour to be synthesised. The colour is often also considered ambiguous, like most colours that are made by combining two primary colours, it’s often seen as uncertain.
It’s in that ambiguity that I find my personal relationship with the colour. It’s not one of my favourites, but I also don’t dislike it. It does frequently appear in my own work, especially as a substitute for black and often as a symbol of the material and the symbolic antithesis of cyan in my paintings.
In Culture
Purple has for a very long time been associated with royalty, luxury and aristocracy. This is largely because of how rare the colour is in nature, and one of the original sources of the colour pigment was the secretions of certain sea snails. This led the colour to be extremely expensive in antiquity. It became the colour worn by Roman magistrates and later became the imperial colour worn by the rulers of the Byzantine Empire and the Holy Roman Empire, and eventually was adopted by Roman Catholic bishops. In Japan, the colour is also associated with the emperor and the ruling class. One of the earliest purple dyes was made from a sea snail, which could be found by the two Phoenician cities of Sidon and Tyre. Tyre (modern-day Lebanon) became especially famous for its export of the colour, giving it the name ‘tyrian purple’. The deep, rich purple dye made from the snail was used to dye clothes and textiles and clothing coloured with Tyrian dye is mentioned in several ancient epics like the Iliad and the Aeneid. The colour purple also appears in the Hebrew bible.
The exclusive colour was commonly used to colour togas in ancient Rome, and along with golden embroidery was a clear signal of class belonging. It was commonly worn by generals during their public rites known as triumphs, and even by the emperor himself on special occasions. According to the New Testament, Jesus Christ, right before his crucifixion, was dressed in purple by the Romans to mock his claim to be ‘King of the Jews’. The process of creating the dye from the Mediterranean mollusc was extensive and expensive, and would often need several thousand snails for a few ounces of dye. Mountains of empty shells have been found at the ancient sites of both Sidon and Tyre. Eventually, the colour purple would be synthesised by the Chinese, creating what’s known as Han Purple.
While purple was popularised and became a fashionable colour in the state of Qi after Duke Huan of Qi developed a preference for it, it would remain regarded as a secondary colour in ancient China and not a primary colour. Some who did regard it very highly, however, were the rulers of the Byzantine Empire who continued to use the colour as an imperial colour. They used it for diplomatic gifts and even official documents, and to decorate pages of the bible. Several manuscripts were written in gold lettering on parchment that was coloured with Tyrian purple. The colour would remain favourable with European nobles until the fall of Constantinople at the hands of the Ottoman Turks, and the colour lost its imperial status as the great dye works of Constantinople were destroyed. Eventually, the colour scarlet, made with dye from the cochineal insect, would become the new royal colour of Europe.
As the colour was no longer available, Pope Paul II decreed that cardinals would no longer wear Tyrian purple, but rather would wear scarlet. Bishops and archbishops were assigned the colour purple, but not the expensive and rare Tyrian purple that the cardinals had worn. Instead, this purple was made from mixing indigo blue and red from the previously mentioned insect. While purple had lost some of its lustre, it still remained inaccessible for most people, and would remain so until the 19th century, when a British chemistry student by the name of William Henry Perkin accidentally produced a synthetic purple shade called mauveine, shortened simply to mauve.
Mauve gets its name from the mallow flower, which is in the same colour. The flower is a relative of the marsh mallow (Althaea officinalis), which was used as a medicinal plant, whose medicinal confection inspired the sugary confectionery marshmallow we know today as a trusty companion to hot chocolate or key ingredient of s’mores. The colour mauve quickly became popular and fashionable after Queen Victoria wore a silk gown dyed with the colour to a Royal Exhibition in 1862. Perkin developed an industrial process, built a factory and produced the dye by the ton, and so the colour purple became commonly accessible and was one of the first of a series of modern industrial dyes which transformed both the chemical industry and fashion. While more accessible, it would remain popular with the upper class but would eventually become a colour of social change in the 20th century.
The colour was adopted by the Women’s Suffrage movement at the beginning of the century, and later with Feminism in the 70’s as well as the psychedelic counter-culture of the 1960s. Where musicians like Jimi Hendrix and his song ‘Purple Haze’ made purple into a mind-expanding colour. The colour would remain popular in the 80s, where musicians like Prince used it to express the richness of the 80s and the extravagant lifestyle afforded by the times. Reminiscing about the romantic side, but also the individualistic symbolism of the colour. It was bold, vain and a colour used to attract attention. Today, purple has fallen out of fashion for some, but it’s still common to see it.
To the people who love the colour, it still stands as a symbol of luxury, rarity, royalty and much more. Perhaps due to its ties to religion, it has also remained as a symbol of mystery and magic, today being associated with wizard robes and witches of fantasy tales. It also remains as an ambiguous colour, which also represents pride, arrogance, and the worst sides of nobility.
In My Work
The mixture of the calm of blue with the energetic found in red does make it a peculiar colour, and it’s perhaps in this border between the two that its roots to mysticism plant themselves firmly. In new age movements, one shade of purple, indigo, is associated with special and unique character qualities. People label themselves as ‘indigo children’ and the like. A love for fragrant flowers like violets and lilacs also gives the regal colour a connection to folk culture and art. This paradoxical nature of the colour makes it ripe for creative interpretation and expression.
It’s both a sad and a happy colour, and it can amplify those feelings of a person, and it gives rise to a multitude of emotional connective paths in a painting. It’s a deeply tragic and profoundly romantic colour. Expressing both undying love and affection, but also heartbreak and unrequited love. As I’ve mentioned, to me and my Work, cyan is a colour of spirit. Purple is often associated with materialism and artificial spirituality in my own work, and the primary symbolic reason for its use.
It’s not a bad colour and I don’t hold negative feelings about it. It’s quite a powerful colour, and it does feel that way both to view and use. In some colours it’s been a colour of mourning, especially because of how closely it can be perceived to black (especially in its darker and bluer hues). In my own paintings, it often fills a similar function as black but adds more ambiguity to it, and can be read as both darker and brighter. As with all colours, light and the surrounding colours play an important role. Purple especially changes in emotional level and expression depending on the colours it interacts with, and can stabilise an otherwise unstable colour and ground it in either of its two sides.
Purple remains a staple in my work and will continue to do so. It’s a colour extruding extravagance, royalty and mystique. It’s a powerful colour able to express many things, some even paradoxical and contrary to one another. It encourages imagination and deepening inner understanding. On the other hand, it can also be excessive and ignorant of its own flaunting. It can be arrogant and embody the worst parts of materialism and indulgence, priding itself on an authority which is ambivalent and unclear.
