Pink: The Exposed Color in Contemporary Art and Culture

by Barbara Nemitz, Karl Schawelka

From the rosy tint of wind-reddened cheeks to the first flush of arousal, from cherry blossoms to PeptoBismol, pink is a sweet, intimate, fragile and sickening shade. Few colors trigger more contradictory associations and emotions--tender, childish, plastic, pornographic--or are so symbolic of both high and low culture. Pink is sometimes awkward, even embarrassing, but on the other hand it is enjoyed and associated with the idea of beauty. Artists of all hues, from Jean-Honore Fragonard to Pablo Picasso, Caspar David Friedrich, Louise Bourgeois, Sylvie Fleury or Pipilotti Rist, have studied it in their works. The examples collected here include those and more, featuring Caspar David Friedrich, the early Joseph Beuys, Willem De Kooning, Andy Warhol and Yves Klein, not to mention contemporaries like Christo, Nan Goldin, Vanessa Beecroft, Wolfgang Tillmans, Takashi Murakami and Pipilotti Rist. In addition, Pink gathers work by a group of young talents from the Bauhaus University in Vienna and the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, where working students cooperated over an interactive web site to investigate the color's most current perceptions and uses. Their final selection suggests, among other things, that viewer reactions are determined by cultural factors. For example, the positive perception of pink in Japan seems strikingly masculine to the Western viewer; every year the country pauses to contemplate the pink blossoms of the cherry trees, which, after just a few days, drift like snow to the ground, symbols of the death of the samurai, who falls in the bloom of youth. As the cherry trees blossom, this book on the nature of pink makes its debut, an unusual intercultural discourse.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction

283 pages, Hardcover

First published August 15, 2006

Reviews

[Astrid · Rating 2 out of 5]

For me, it was quite boring. It's probably my mistake for thinking the book included information on the colour pink or symbolism of it, etc. It does this a little bit in the beginning (nothing revolutionary or new btw) but the book is 99% just images of pink in art with no interpretation. A few of the images do get some explanation but quite blandly written down and idk; my mind just wandered off a lot of the time.

I do love the cover and its soft velvety touch. This book is for you if you're a collector of coffee table books with just mainly art photos in it, or if you're a lover of pink, modern art and architecture. If you crave anything else beyond that; could do with skipping it. Maybe Valerie Steele's 'Pink: The History of a Punk, Pretty, Powerful Color' is a better fit.

[Mo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wide array of intelligent and important thoughts on the color pink in art.