Pre-History Period - Colored Pigments

DAAE2015 Assignment1

In the pre-history period, colored pigments were mostly derived from natural resources (Delaman & Guineau 2000), which were used to decorate the body and cave paintings. With the flourish of ancient Egyptian civilization, color could be used symbolically. For example, red skin indicated health and youth while green represented spring and renewal at this time. With the advance of the human civilization, the cognition and utilization of color has been developed. It is found that color may convey symbolic association and meaning, which are not universal and differ across from individuals, cultures and sub-cultures, this can be explained by symbolic interactionist theory (Blumer, 1969). This article chooses red to analyze.

First of all, it is believed that color response is influenced by individual differences and characteristics, including age and gender (Manav, 2007). Specifically, though men and women may experience color differently perceptually due to the X-chromosome gene (Pardo, Perez and Suero, 2007), the affection of red is slightly different between men and women. The study found that both women and men do not like red very much, which receive favor with 7% of male respondents and 9% of the female respondents (Hallock, 2003). The color red is an important signal for the fertility of females and the dominance of males in nature. Red can affect males’ perceptions on attractiveness, women wearing red is considered as more attractive and sexually desirable by men. Besides, it appears that children younger than 3 years of age prefer red over all other colors, whereas individuals over 3 years of age typically endorse blue as the favorite color (Garth, 1924). Particularly, red is the overall preferred color for children, which is ranked as first to represent happiness (Zentner, 2001). However, the meanings of red and people's reactions to it tend to be fairly consistent across all age groups, either negative or positive color meanings (Williams, 2008). Though the degree of preference is different, the meaning of red is supposed to be similar.

Moreover, color can be culturally dependent. In most eastern countries, red is a symbol of good information. For example, Aslam’s cultural analysis of color meanings (Aslam, 2006) found that red is used for good luck and represents happiness and love in China. Because Chinese people used to think they were descendants of the Sun God and red is the color of the Sun God, so the original worship endows festival meanings of red in Chinese culture (Bai, 2013). In Japan, red stands for not only Love, but also Anger and Jealousy, because it symbolizes strong emotions rather than intellectual ideas and therefore excitement, energy, anger, danger, passion and aggression. Japanese also considered the Sun as red, symbolizing the life force in humans, which can be seen on the Japanese flag. Because of distinctively different cultural backgrounds, the core meaning of red has different abstract meanings in each language. In contrast, red in English is mostly loaded with negative connotations, such as anger, guilt and sin due to mainly relating to blood (Ammer, 1992). For instance, red represents Fear, Anger and Jealousy in Germanic culture (Aslam, 2006). In addition, red means mourning in some parts of Africa and red is associated with communism in Russia because the red flag is used to overthrow the Tsar in history.

Subcultures, which are distinct cultural groups existing as an identifiable segment within a larger, more complex society, includes ethnic subcultures, religious subcultures, disabilities subcultures and more. Considering religious subcultures, red is a powerful color in the Bible, which can symbolize both sin and redemption (Krauzer, 2014). Similarly, red has two facets in Buddhism. The color red is auspicious and considered sacred with the preservation of our life force, but it also indicates warning or threat to life surrounding by danger signs and signals (Kumar, 2002). Besides, as for Muslims, red is the color of the Sharif, the protectors of Mecca and a red rose is often used to symbolize Allah’s perfect beauty.

In summary, Red is the hottest of all the Primary Colors. It is the most visually stimulating and most intense color. This article provides a general discussion about color meaning of red varying from individuals, cultures and subcultures. However, there is not any accurate result because color is not a static every but a form of communication whose meaning can change from individuals in the same culture or subcultures (Elliot &Maier, 2007). The exact meaning of color should be explained under specific situations and at that particular point of time as well.