( 그림공부 ) Red color에 대하여

 

Wassily Kandinsky, “Mit und Gegen,” 1929

 

Red color에 대한 흥미있는 기사가 있어서 여기 옮긴다.

(번역은 구글 번역, 영어 원문은 맨 뒤에 )

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빨간색은 장미, 심장, 열정, 생명의 혈액입니다. 또한 STOP, 위험, 

두려운 빨간 펜, 불장난, 그리고 알다시피요.
어느 쪽이든, 그것은 억누를 수 없습니다. 빨간색은 "강력한" 기본색 중 가장 눈에

띄는 것 중 하나이며, "가장 시끄러운"* 기본색 중 하나로 알려져 있기 때문입니다.

따라서 소방차, 번쩍이는 불빛, "금지" 표지판, 악마, 그리고 에너지, 강렬함,

결승선, 산불 사랑 등이 있습니다.
"빨간색이 나팔 소리와 같다고 말하는 것은 순수한 환상이 아닙니다." – 조이스 캐리

 

John Singer Sargent, A Dinner Table at Night, 1884, oil, 20 x 27 inches

 

 

사실 예술가들은 종종 소리의 관점에서 빨간색을 생각하는 경향이 있는 듯합니다. 

칸딘스키도 그랬고, 르누아르도 그랬습니다. "저는 빨간색이 울려 퍼지고 종처럼 

들리기를 바랍니다." 르누아르가 말했습니다. "그렇게 되지 않으면, 저는 그것을 얻을 때까지 

더 많은 빨간색과 다른 색상을 추가합니다." 

연금술에서 빨간색(라틴어 "Rubedo")은 대작의 마지막 단계를 상징하며, 

연금술적 성공과 위대한 작업의 완성을 알립니다. 빨간색은 마치 연금술사의 

마지막 벨벳 커튼으로, 탐내는 변형 금과 철학자의 돌 앞에서 녹아내립니다.

역사가 미셸 파스투로는 Red: The History of a Color에서 "빨간색은 원형적인 색상이며, 

인간이 처음으로 마스터하고, 만들고, 재생산하고, 다른 색조로 분해한 색상입니다."라고 썼습니다. 

그래도 어쨌든 유화의 역사를 통틀어 밝은 빨간색은 큰 문제였습니다.

빨간색은 (카드뮴 레드에 대해 이야기하지 않는 한, 여전히 그렇습니다) "도망치는" 색상 중 

하나였습니다. 즉, 어떤 종류의 빛에서도 시간이 지남에 따라 희미해질 가능성이 있습니다. 

물론 황토와 산화철과 같은 비교적 안정적인 붉은 흙이 있었지만, 더 눈에 띄는 것은 

1) 주사, 희토류로 독성이 강하고 너무 비싼 것, 2) 주홍, 빛에 노출되면 검은색으로 변하는 것, 

3) "최소" 또는 납 레드, 빛에 노출되면 흰색으로 변하는 것, 

또는 4) 유기물, 즉 필연적으로 희미해지는 것이었습니다.

현대 화학이 등장하기 전까지 대부분의 예술가는 코치닐(또는 완곡하게 말하면 진홍색 호수)이라는 

도망치는 안료를 사용했는데, 원래는 그 이름을 따서 명명된 작은 붉은 아르메니아 

비늘 곤충의 몸을 갈아서 만든 것입니다.

알리자린과 같은 합성 색소와 염료가 19세기 후반에 발명된 후, 코치닐과 같은 천연 염색 제품의 

사용은 점차 줄어들었습니다. 적어도 예술과 직물에서는 그랬습니다(결과는 엇갈렸습니다). 

그러나 "카민"(코치닐 추출물, "천연 레드 4"라고도 함)은 곤충의 색조를 내는 카민산에서 

이름을 따서 지어졌으며, 오늘날에도 여전히 인공 꽃, 식용 색소, 립스틱과 같은 제품에 

널리 사용되고 있습니다(네, 입술에 수천 마리의 작은 비늘 벌레의 시체를 먹거나 바르는 

일이 있을 수 있습니다. 유감스럽게도요.)

마티스는 이 색을 너무 좋아해서 1911년에 "레드 스튜디오"를 완성했을 때 

거의 완전히 추상적인 최초의 "색상 필드" 그림 중 하나를 그렸습니다. 

이상하게도, 마티스는 한때 "빨간색 한 줌은 양동이 한 통보다 더 붉다"고 농담을 했습니다. 

Henri Matisse, “The Red Studio” Issy-les-Moulineaux, 1911

 

"레드 스튜디오"는 현대의 거장이 안료를 양동이 가득 쏟아 부은 유일한 그림은 아니었습니다. 

그리고 이 모든 자유주의적 루베도는 마크 로스코와 바넷 뉴먼으로 이어졌다고 주장할 수 있습니다.

 

Mark Rothko, Untitled/Red on Red 1969

Barnett Newman, “Vir Heroicus Sublimis,” 1950-51 Sharon Mollerus via Flickr under CC BY-SA 2.0

 

 

예술가들 사이에서는 "그림을 팔고 싶다면 빨간색을 넣으세요"라는 농담이 있습니다. 

이 농담에는 진실이 있습니다. 빨간색 작품은 경매에서 더 높은 가격을 받는 것으로 

나타났습니다(하지만 파란색 작품만큼은 아닙니다). 흑백 광인이자 1980년대의 

"색채 표현주의자" 조지 드 그로트는 어쨌든 이에 동의했습니다. 

"빨간색을 사용하면 실수할 수 없습니다. 모든 그림에는 빨간색이 들어가야 합니다." 그는 말했습니다.

현대 예술가 데릭 저먼에 따르면 "화가들은 빨간색을 향신료처럼 사용합니다." 

나쁜 생각이 아닙니다. "모든 색조 중에서 빨간색이 가장 강력합니다." 

미국의 직물 차르 잭 레노 라렌이 주장합니다. "전기 파란색이 하나 있다면, 

빨간색은 열두 개가 훨씬 더 강합니다. 흰색을 강조하거나 청동으로 태우거나 검은색을 

다이너마이트로 만들 때 사용하세요." 글쎄요, 그렇죠!

Georgia O’Keefe, “Red Hill and Bones,” 1941. Death? Nah, life everlasting, And red is the new black.

 

John Waterhouse, “’I Am Half Sick of Shadows,’ said the Lady of Shalott,” 1915. Well, that dress oughtta do it if anything can!

 

Red is the rose, the heart, the passion, the lifeblood of the living. It’s also STOP, danger, the dreaded red pen, play with fire and you know what. 

 

Either way, it’s irrepressible. That’s because red is one of the most visible of the “high impact” primaries, also known as one of the “loudest”* – hence firetrucks, flashing lights, “DO NOT” signs and the Devil, but also energy, intensity, finish-lines, wildfire love – and so much more. 

 

*“It is not pure fantasy to say that the color red is like the sound of a trumpet.” – Joyce Carey

 

 

Artists, in fact, seem often  inclined to think of red in terms of sound. Kandinsky did, and so did Renoir: “I want a red to be sonorous, to sound like a bell,” Renoir said. “If it doesn’t turn out that way, I add more reds and other colors until I get it.” Boom.

 

In alchemy, redness (Latin “Rubedo”) symbolizes the final stage in the Magnum Opus, signaling alchemical success and the completion of the Great Work. Red is the alchemists’ final velvet curtain, as it were, melting before the coveted transmutational gold and the philosopher’s stone. 

 

“Red,” writes historian Michel Pastoureau in Red: The History of a Color, “is the archetypal color, the first color humans mastered, fabricated, reproduced, and broke down into different shades.” Still, throughout the history of oil painting anyway, bright red was a big problem.

 

Red was (and unless we’re talking cadmium red, still is) one of the “fugitive” colors, meaning it’s likely to fade over time in any kind of light. Sure, there were relatively stable red earths like ochre and iron oxide, but just about anything more striking had to be either 1) cinnabar, a rare earth, highly toxic and too expensive, 2) vermillion, which turned black if exposed light 3) “minimum” or lead red, which light turned white instead, or 4) organic, which meant it would inevitably fade. 

 

Until modern chemistry swooped in, most artists used a fugitive pigment called either cochineal (or euphemistically crimson lake), made from the ground-up bodies of the small red Armenian scale insect it was originally named after.

 

After synthetic pigments and dyes such as alizarin were invented in the late 19th century, use of natural-dye products such as cochineal gradually diminished, at least in art and textiles (with mixed results). However, “carmine” (aka cochineal extract aka “natural red 4”) named for the carminic acid that produces the insects’ tint, is still used widely today in things like artificial flowers, food coloring, and lipstick (yep you could be eating and/or smearing the dead bodies of thousands of little scaly bugs all over your lips, I’m sorry to say.)

 

Matisse loved the color so much he produced one of the first nearly fully abstract “color field” paintings when he completed “The Red Studio” in 1911. Oddly, Matisse once quipped, “a thimbleful of red is redder than a bucketful.” Um…

 

The “Red Studio” was hardly the only painting into which the modern master spilled bucketfuls of the pigment, either. And all this liberal rubedo led, fairly directly one could argue, to Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman.  

 

There’s a joke among artists that goes, if you want a sell a painting, put red in it, and there’s a kernel of truth to it; red artworks have been found to fetch higher prices at auctions (though not as high as blue ones it turns out). Monochrome madman and 1980’s “Chromatic Expressionist” George De Groat agreed, anyway: “You can’t go wrong with the use of red; every painting should have red in it,” he said

 

“Painters use red like spice,” according to contemporary artist Derek Jarman, and it’s not a bad idea. “Of all the hues, reds have the most potency, claims American textile czar Jack Lenor Laresn. “ If there is one electric blue, a dozen reds are so charged.  Use them to punctuate white, burn into bronzes, or dynamite black.” Well, yeah!