The Voice of Colors – Part One

“Color is my daylong obsession, joy, and torment.”
(Claude Monet)

Mark Rothko

Colors are our perception of the world, not only visually but also emotionally.

Each of us is emotionally linked to certain colors more than others.

Colors can be fundamental elements of our personal stories.

Irrational fears or sweet memories.

For example, one of my favorite colors is green and it is related to my experience of pain and rebirth. Green were the leaves of the tree above my head, when I was able to go out for a while with my family and friends after the tumor removal operation in the hospital park. It was the first time I had set foot, better to say the wheelchair, after ten hours of surgery, a week of rehabilitation of the body, and the hypothesis of a non-awakening: I remember that I smelled the air, I tilted my head back and saw above me the clouds glide slowly across the blue sky and all the leaves – one by one, with their different shapes – of the tree above the bench where we were. That green had never seemed greener to me, like emerald embroidery of the blue of the sky.

Blue and green are my two favorite colors.

 

Obviously the interpretation and symbolism behind the colors is not the same for everyone, each culture has its own personal interpretation, in accordance with the tradition, religion and soul of those peoples.

The journey through colors is always fascinating, and I'm not just saying it as a photographer.

Even if it's also disturbing that, on a physical level, “the color we perceive associated with an object is precisely the color that that object lacks, the segment of the electromagnetic spectrum that is rejected,” as Kassia St Clair writes in the introduction to her very interesting book “The Secret Lives Of Colors”, which is a backward journey on the creation, use and meaning of colors and their shades, in the world.

 

Colors are nothing more than electromagnetic frequencies that affect the retina. Isaac Newton (1643-1727) was the first researcher to demonstrate that white light is composed of the sum of the frequencies of all other colors and it was he who introduced the term spectrum. The fundamental colors were classified by Newton as seven (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet) according to the 7 musical notes, the 7 days of the week and the 7 planets then known in astrology.

But that's the tedious part. Physics and I never got along too well.

More interesting is to see how colors are interpreted, on a psychological level, in our Western culture, to then compare it with that of the Asian world.

 

“Mandrill”. Franza Marc, 1913

 

Green is the color of nature, of growth, of nourishment, of renewal and of hope. It transmits a sense of harmony, allowing you to find balance and a sense of well-being and fullness.

In general, green represents vital forces, health and creative renewal; while the light green suggests a note of hope, the dark one the spiritual maturity. It is a peaceful color, not surprisingly the color often used on the walls of school classrooms and hospital rooms.

In Latin green was said virdis, a word that belongs to the family of lemmas which indicate life (vivere), strength (vis), man (vir).

In Islam it became the most important color, starting from the 12th century, because together with white it was the favorite color of the Prophet, the sky itself above Mount Qaf is green. It's no coincidence that green appears in the flags of Bangladesh, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

In fact, at the time of the Crusades, green was associated with the devil, precisely because it was the sacred color of Muslims.

 

Blue, on the other hand, is a very special color, because, as St Clair always tells in her book, in 1923 the American geneticist Clyde Keeler discovered, by experimenting on blind mouses, that blue light was the only one perceived by mouse; not only from mammals, but also the blind people, have a special receptor that allows them to perceive only blue light. It is thanks to this light that we regulate our internal sleep clock.

Although in the past the blue was little considered, if not associated with mourning and bad luck in ancient Rome. It was only in the twelfth century, in full Gothic style, that blue began to be associated with divine emanation; it's no coincidence that the iconography of the Virgin Mary dressed in blue is from the same period.

Today blue is a color that inspires peace, relaxation, lightness and contemplation. The turquoise blue indicates sensitivity and finesse. Blue therefore represents a spiritual dimension (celestial, in fact) and being a cold color it recalls distance, rest and intellect.

 

Red is one of the most studied colors by psychologists, as its effects on the human psyche (and not just bulls) are supported by evidence.

Red is the color of vitality, energy, warmth, dynamism, passion. It can transmit energy and courage, but in excess it generates anxiety and agitation. It can be a source of vitality or it can burn too much and destroy – like fire; however, it indicates a lack of distance in things. Deep red, on the other hand, is a symbol of aggression and anger. It is a color that increases stress and nervousness, but at the same time amplifies physical strength, as demonstrated by the wrestlers who wore a red suit during the 2004 Athens Olympics: they won 55 percent of the time.

By the way, the story of the bulls is bogus, the bull is color blind, and charges the matador for the waving of the cape not for its color, while the macaques and mandrills, they do, use their red parts of the genitals to signal their excitement and aggression.

Red has always been a color associated with power, from the ancient Egyptians to the generals of the Roman Empire. But also to lust and sin, like the devil depicted in red, or the various “Red-Light” districts in Amsterdam or in the various districts of cities around the world where prostitution is practiced.

The use of red in the painter Rothko is emblematic, the artist who suffered from severe depression and used colors as therapy, for which red was “fire and blood”.

 

Yellow is not an easy color to define. It's a color that inspires freedom, liberation, lightness, light and intuition; gives mental clarity and a sense of appropriateness. The straw yellow nuance is linked to fertilization and fertility, the lemon yellow to youth and the notion of acidity. Golden yellow is a symptom of all wealth. Some shades of yellow reflect a certain harshness and resentment. Negatively it can also mean blindness, jealousy and tyranny. Often, in psychology, it is associated with madness, for its bright and burning tones like the sun: the use of yellow by Van Gogh in his paintings is famous, indicative of his mental state.

It’s not so intuitive, as for red, that yellow was for a long time a “rough” color, in France, in the mid-nineteenth century, scandalous literature was recognizable for books with yellow covers. These books, and their associated color, became the symbol of revolt to Victorian respectable values – Oscar Wilde loved to wear yellow for provocation, and a “yellow book” is what makes his famous Dorian Gray aware of the sins of the world.

Since then, yellow has taken on meanings of perversion and contagion, there are many terms in the West linked to this color in a negative way: from “yellow fever” and other diseases, such as jaundice, to “yellow danger” (invasion of migrants from Asia to Europe and America in the early twentieth century), up to the color of the star used by the Nazis as a stigma on the uniforms of Jews in concentration camps.

On the other hand it is the color of gold, and in this sense it has a positive symbolic value: “golden age”, “golden dreams”, “a golden girl” until “morning has gold in mouth”.

 

Brown is one of the two colors, with gray, which I just don't like. On a psychological level, it promotes a feeling of solidity, value and performance on a practical level. It allows a strong connection to the earth and to one's own grounding. Brown is, in fact, the color of the earth and of matter. In negative it can represent passivity and laziness. Brown is an image of security, of material and concrete realization. Dark brown represents the strength of tradition. Some shades of brown, however, symbolize wickedness, selfishness and avarice.

It was the first color used by man, since the biblical creation of man from mud.

“Brown may be the color of the fertile soil from which we get our food, but we never show our gratitude to them. On the other hand, it not only recalls the land to which we will return one day, but it is also the color of mud, dirt, waste and shit,” as the English scholar writes in her book.

And most importantly, it's not a color in itself, but a shade of color, it's not in the rainbow. However, being drawn from the earth, it was the color most used in painting at the beginning.

 

We come to the last two colors, which are the two poles that enclose everything: white and black.

 

White (union of all colors) is a symbol of completeness, purity, conscience and truth. It represents chastity, innocence and childhood, but also the wisdom of old age and the end of life. White symbolizes the universe of virtues and awareness.

Over the centuries, white is a color that fascinates and frightens, because it is considered divine. Melville's White Whale Moby Dick was a powerful example of this in literature.

Even on a pictorial level it is difficult to obtain, because it does not act as on an optical level, it is not the sum of all the colors, but you have to start from a special white pigment, and every little mistaken addition turns it into black. The painters of the past had at their disposal white lead; the white pigment also used by noble ladies to lighten the skin.

It's the color of purity and holiness, like the white dove in Christian symbolism, and the clothes worn by the baby Jesus.

In architecture, white has always been used as an aesthetic symbol of elegance, drawing inspiration from ancient Greek and Roman monuments, synonymous with architectural perfection.

Personally, I doubt white, I also believe it's a sneaky color, who likes to appear good-natured and holy, but who hides perfidious pitfalls. If I have to associate it with instinct it makes me think of the white padded rooms of asylums, to sedate the minds of madmen, or – drama of dramas for every writer – of the blocking of the “blank page”, which is so fascinating when you start writing because it opens up every possibility but that becomes a noose around our necks when no words arise in us, and our eyes remain for a long time staring at that page as if it were an abyss.

Then, too painfully, I associate white with the color of the gowns and uniforms of doctors and nurses in hospitals. My mother forced me, as a child,  to always wear a new white T-shirt under my clothes at every medical examination of the heart.

Colors, like every element of our life (perfumes, songs, sounds, gestures) remain associated in our unconscious with certain moments of existence. I have always hated that false and suffocating practice of wearing white as a symbol of cleanliness and education, so as soon as I grow up, until now, I only wear black T-shirts under my clothes when I go out.

 

Black. The absence of all colors is a symbol of interiority, centering and also of hidden aspects of being and of underground forces. In fact, the notions of nothing and the unconscious are attributed to it. It can be a symbol of death and peace as a cessation of stimuli. It allows you to project yourself into the totality of the unmanifest that is waiting to be born; it represents the original magma source of all potential and place of rebirth. It can also mean the end of time, death and disintegration. Some types of black can be images of renunciation, revolt or violence.

“Black is both the color of elegance and that of mourning, and in the course of history it has become the bearer of the most disparate meanings: from fertility to erudition, to piety. With black, things are always complicated,” writes St Clair.

If on a pictorial level it is the sum of all colors, on an optical level it is the absence of light. This has led it in history to be associated with all that is death, occult, mystery and evil: from the Egyptian god Anubis to Kali.

It's the color of witchcraft.

But it is also that of the night, and I don't think it is just a color to associate with all that is negative in reality. I often repeat how photography has taught me a basic principle, which goes from Daguerre to Gibran: if you want to see light you have to go through darkness. The stars shine above our heads and in our dreams because there is the black background of the night, just as the small lights of the candles can dance thanks to the darkness.

Think about it, black is our shadow, but it is its absence that makes our body evil. Black has always been assigned the difficult and onerous task of being the alter-ego of light, with all its symbology, but without it there would be no light, as is perfectly enclosed in a definitive way in the Tao of Zen.

 

But this opens another chapter, which we will see next time.

For now we stop at the western half of the planet.

In the second part we will see the meanings of colors in Asia and the theory of “navarasa”.

 

“The Turning Road. L'estaque”, 1906. André Derain

READ ALSO:

• Painting and Photography: A Glance (Part One)
• Painting and Photography: A Glance (Part Two)
• The Shadow of Light  

Kassia St Clair: “The Secret Lives of Colors”, 2016

Italian version