SEEING RED - intimate colour

About

In Russian, the word for beautiful is red. Krasivaya (beautiful), from Krasnyy (red)  

“If one says ‘Red’ and there are 50 people listening,[…] there will be 50 reds in their minds. And one can be sure that all these reds will be very different.” Josef Albers  

Red is an emotionally intense colour. It is an intricate colour, with multiple contradictory ‘meanings’. It is a colour of extremes, associated with energy, strength, war and danger. It is outward moving - signifying passion, desire, love, courage, compassion.- and inward - the colour of life itself, the colour inside our bodies, the colour of blood. An intimate colour. In parts of Africa it is, also, the colour of mourning.  

Red is the longest wavelength of light : it is focused behind the retina forcing the lens to grow more convex, pushing it forward . Therefore, we perceive red areas as moving forward. Red advances. Because it is sharply focused by the eye, it lends itself to structural planes and sharp angles. It is hot, and opaque in quality : it is solid and substantial. 

(Bees can’t see the colour red ; red flowers are usually pollinated by birds, butterflies, bats, and wind, rather than bees. And 8 percent of the male population cannot see red at all!)  

Red is the universal colour. All languages have words for black and white. But if a third hue exists, (and sometimes it does not, as in Darkinyung’s, an Aboriginal Australian language, which has just two terms -mining for “black” and barag for “white”), it is red. And as ‘black’ and ‘white’ are only terms for the absence and the presence of light, red is the essential, the first true colour.  

“When in doubt, make a red painting.” Kay WalkingStick