The Meaning of the Colour Red
Introduction
Red is the third and final part of the RGB colour model, where it’s a primary colour. In the CMYK colour model, it’s a secondary and a complementary colour of cyan. It’s a colour with a wide range of hues and shades, and has about as many symbolic meanings as slight colour variations. Red is a common colour occurring in nature; it’s found in birds, insects, flowers, fruits and of course coursing through your veins in this very moment. Red was also one of the first pigments to ever be painted with - made from ochre, it was used to paint cave walls in some of the first prehistoric art, along with black and white. We have, since the beginning of our existence, been seeing red.
While most primates are able to view the full range of colours on the spectrum visible to humans, many mammals like dogs and cows have dichromacy, which means they only see blues and yellows, and can’t distinguish between red and green. Bulls don’t hate the colour red as the matador might have you believe; it’s the motion of the cape which makes them charge at it with ferocity. Fortunately, perhaps for the 1-2% of the human population with red hair.
Red hair is most common in northern and western European ancestry (2-6%). The colour of red hair varies from a deep burgundy to a bright copper-like hue. The term “redhead” (redd hede) has been noted in written use since 1510. The English word red is closely related to all other Germanic variations of the word, and they can all be traced back to the proto-Indo-European word: reudh. It’s the only colour for which a definitive common proto-Indo-European root word has been found. This goes to highlight the connection to the colour throughout human history. Several words are derived from this root word, including: ruddy, rusty, and via Latin: ruby, rubric and russet. These give but a few of the many associations we have to red in both visual arts and literature.
The most obvious association with red is one we’ve already alluded to: blood. Because of this, the colour is often symbolic of sacrifice, danger and courage. Other common meanings include heat, activity, passion, love, joy and dominance. The juxtaposition between aggression and passion makes it clear that red is a deep and complex colour expressing a range of fiery emotions, and perhaps hate and love are closer than they may initially seem. For me, that sums up the colour pretty well.
I don’t hate it, and I don’t love it. I tend to lean more towards liking than disliking the colour; it’s a common occurrence in my own work, and it looks very nice with black, though it definitely brings out the darker qualities of the colour. We will discuss that darkness a little further, and the evil role red plays in my art. Before that, however, we’re going to delve deeper into the history and cultural impact red has had across the world.
In Culture
Cave paintings found around the world have been painted with different types of red pigments. In an archaeological site in South Africa, remains indicate that people were scraping and grinding ochre for its colour. Ochre is a clay that gets its red colour from iron oxide. One of the more famous cave paintings in the cave of Altamira in Spain has a painting of a large bison painted red with ochre. Over in China, red hematite (iron oxide compound) powder was found scattered around the remains at a grave site, and it’s speculated that the red powder was used to symbolise blood in an offering to the dead. Another early and natural way to make red pigment was a dye, which was made by drying and crushing the bodies of the females of a tiny scale insect in the genus Kermes, which also gives the dye its name. The insect lives on the sap of certain trees that grow around the Mediterranean area.
Jars of Kermes were found in a Neolithic cave-burial in the south of France, and the process of making the red dye is mentioned in texts as early as the 8th century BC. A similar pigment, but from a different insect, was produced by ancient Assyrians and Persians. The insect and the Kermes dye would play an important role in ancient Rome, which imported it from Spain.
In ancient Egypt, the colour was associated with life, health and victory. Egyptians would colour themselves with ochre during celebrations and rituals, and in Egypt the women began using the colour as a cosmetic and used the colour to redden cheeks and lips. Egyptians also used the dye henna to colour their hair and paint their nails a reddish hue. The association with red as a colour of victory would later be reinforced by the Romans.
For the Romans, red was the colour associated with the god of war, Mars. Roman soldiers wore red tunics and officers wore a cloak which would often be crimson, scarlet or purple. The flag of the Roman Empire was red with the letters SPQR in gold, and a Roman general, if victorious, would receive a triumph and have his entire body painted red in honour of his achievement. Red was also used to dye red stripes on togas that would be worn during holidays, and the bride during the wedding often wore a red shawl. The colour was all over ancient Rome. They painted murals and statues with it, and one of the finest pigments called vermilion came from the mineral cinnabar. Paintings made from this red have retained their bright red colour for more than twenty centuries. The extraction of cinnabar was, however, incredibly deadly. Cinnabar is an ore of mercury, and mercury is highly toxic. And so almost all miners who worked in the cinnabar mines in Spain were slaves or prisoners, and being sent to the cinnabar mines was essentially a death sentence. The price for the finest red was and had always been blood, either from insects or labourers.
The bloody colour would further be associated with sacrifice when the early church came to adopt the colour, where it still to this day remains an important colour in rituals and art, symbolising the blood of Christ and the Christian martyrs. The royalty of Europe also took a liking to the colour, and perhaps most famously, Emperor Charlemagne had his palace painted red and wore red shoes to his coronation as a very visible symbol of his authority and dominance. In humans, wearing red in competitive sports, both traditional and e-sports, has been linked with increased performance in competitions. When surveyed, a lot of people say that red is more “dominant”, “aggressive” and “likely to win a physical competition” than, e.g blue, a colour associated with calm. However, while increasing performance in physical tasks, exposure to red decreases performance in cognitive tasks, whereas blue has been shown to help calm thoughts and appeal to creativity. It’s perhaps no wonder then that our rulers today, not exercising physical but mental control, wear blue rather than red.
In the Renaissance, red remained a popular colour and was used in painting to draw the attention of the viewer. It was often used as the colour of the cloak or costume of Christ, Mary or similar central figures. While red was mostly associated with the upper class in Europe, in Renaissance Flanders, people of all social classes wore red at celebrations. The red colour of everyday folks' apparel would be a common motif for both Belgian and Dutch painters. In the 18th century, red would soon become a colour of the people, but not as a symbol of authority and dominance, but as a symbol for resistance, revolution and certainly also bloodshed.
Red became the colour of the French Revolution, where the most militant faction of the revolutionaries, the sans-culottes, would wear red “liberty caps” as part of their uniform. During the revolution, the red flag was proposed as the new national French flag, but was ultimately rejected. However, the colour lives on in the tricolour flag as one of the three colours in the modern French flag. Later in England, dock workers began striking, carrying red flags, and the colour became associated with the new labour movement and later the Labour Party of the United Kingdom. The red flag was eventually adopted by Karl Marx and the new European movements of socialism and communism. It became the main colour of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. As well as being adopted by the Chinese Communist Revolution and eventually Vietnam as well, both countries, whose flags are to this day red.
The colour remains divisive as both a courageous and sacrificial colour, but also as a symbol of anger, passion, heat and war. It remains a symbol of both danger and warning, but also love and passion. It still functions as a colour of attention and attraction. Stop signs and stop lights use the colour as a clear signal and warning. Surveys performed have also found that the same woman wearing different colored dresses is repeatedly found to be more attractive when wearing red. Because of its ability to attract attention, red has also been frequently used in advertising and is frequently found in stores to signal deals and sales. However, recent studies have shown that people are less likely to read something printed in red because they know it’s advertising, and it’s more visually difficult to read than plain black and white text.
While there’s plenty of good, there’s also plenty of bad symbolism with the colour. In the Old Testament, the Book of Isaiah said: “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow”, giving an early association with sin. In the Book of Revelation in the New Testament, the antichrist appears as a red monster, ridden by a woman dressed in scarlet. The devil himself is often depicted in pop culture as a red and horned monster, though this depiction is more often found in modern cartoons, movies and secular art than religious art. Undeniably, the colour is associated with passion, lust, murder and guilt. The idiom “caught red-handed” is still used commonly today. Because of the more lustful association with the colour, it’s also associated with prostitution, especially as a light. Red-light districts are found in almost all underbellies of the urban hellscapes around the world.
The colour red today is also associated with red flags, negative character traits people may display, and the idiom serves as a warning sign of a person’s more nefarious side. But perhaps, all of that is a red herring to distract us and draw our attention to only the negatives of the colour. It’s without a doubt a complex and deep colour that evokes a multitude of different feelings in the viewer, and it has the capacity for both good and bad, just like us. Red flows through a lot of my paintings.
In My Work
Red reminds me of blood, and more negatives than positives, but despite it, it’s a colour I really like. For what reasons exactly, I can’t tell; it just looks good and has some sort of primal appeal. Yet, it more often than not has filled me with dread and fear than anything else. There’s something evil about the colour, and so that’s the role it’s played in most of my paintings. It’s symbolic of the very essence of evil and the bloodshed that feeds those hungry spirits.
The colour appeals to some of the lower faculties of man’s mind; it appeals to the biological instincts, and if unattended, it beckons the body towards anger, egotism and lust. It’s a violent colour that instils a wide array of emotions in the viewer, and it immediately draws attention to something in the painting. It’s a warning sign and, used properly, can be a very powerful colour to work with.
There’s more to blood than just violence, of course, it can be heartache, sacrifice and much more. Fighting can be done for both good and evil, and sometimes the scars tell tales of heroism, not only of evil.
Crimson remembers, it never forgets, and the red aura demands immediate attention. It marks key elements of a story, and a flash of red streaking a canvas can tell more than any other colour. It’s passionate, tragic and filled with regret. Perhaps it’s filled with bravery and noble sacrifice, and the blood reminds us of its importance, of its virtue.
Red is a strong colour and it’s full of life, it’s symbolic of both life and death, of suffering and struggle, but also victory and overcoming. Red is an actionable colour filled with energy; it’s stimulating and distracting, without the proper care, it can be dangerous and lead to some darker sides of consciousness. I’ve only seen red once in my life, and in that moment I truly understood the colour and the power it holds.
Perhaps the part of me that enjoys red is the passionate and rebellious side, and the part of me that fears it is the calm and compassionate. Red is vengeful and dominant, and it’s regal, crowned in madness. My personal connection to red remains a warning, a cautionary tale of the dangers it possesses. It’s not going anywhere in my art, however, and will remain a staple. In some way, we’re all under the spell of vermilion, and as the colour courses through our veins, we are bound to the physical world.
Red deserves respect and caution; it should be used for good, and its power and energy used to fuel good in the world. To bring about positive change and to serve as a reminder of history. Let it motivate you towards betterment, and don’t let it dominate you and rule you towards fruitless desires.
