Color Aesthetics: Response to Reading

“the German soldier Ernst Junger saw them dead and red in the sugar-beet fields lit by moonlight.' They wore bright red pants well into the First World War, when it was suggested that their appalling losses might be reduced if they decolored”(p.4), from this quote we can see that, colour on the dress also influences our mind, behavior, failure and succeed. From the quote and my research about colour that influenced on soldier's mind, said that red colour has a stimulating action on the heart and circulatory system. It helps you feel strong and energetic and is associated with vitality and ambition. So colour would be one part to encourage them, make them confidence, powerful and reach the victory. Another of the example is in Thailand, when people go for a meditation course, usually they dressed in white, because white is the color of pureness, protection and peace. Also has a cleansing effect on the emotions and the spirit. Which all of those are the processes to reach the goal of a meditation. So when you wear white, this colour will encourage your feelings, makes you feel that your body is now pure,clear and peaceful already, then will be ready to clear and make your mind peaceful after. This is how white colour works on human's minds and behaviors.



Naphat Vongin 5234814825

The insight of ones, who ever try to describe the appearance of matters in their vision , “All of which is to say color comes across here as more a presence than a sign, more a force than a code, …”,(p.6). Feelings or natural sensory is the great motivational force that shifting along in a presence; so an appealing state of color, in any matter, is different in meanings to those refinement people and uncultivated people. The color itself is “Far from being symbols, distinct from their referents, the colors are those referents in a deeply organic sense” (p.8 ), which is the reason that “Men in a state of nature” (p.3) or uneducated, uncivilized people are commonly attracted by easy colors; vivid colors that are most likely to be detected as similarly as an innocent kid choosing color with the index finger pointing out, instinctively. These theoretical facts can also help to easily points out the difference in reality. For instance, why do most of Thai taxi drivers always randomly put paints and bright stickers on their cabs? Why do they even put spoilers on their rides and said “Oh I don’t know, maybe it helps us fly!?!”? Because those they are from uncivilized part of the country, they do not know the intrinsic expressions of each color. They do not know the theoretical ways, but Ferrari does. As called the “refinement people”, this legendary sport vehicle company maker is sophisticated enough in the level of know-how, understanding that minimal usage of color is significant to emphasize the meaning of colors. The red color is not used sanctimoniously, Ferrari's red comes about due to the way the sport began, where each country was assigned a color and the red for Ferrari has remained. Red was assigned to Italian cars, Green to English, Blue to France and so on. Canary yellow as seen on the Prancing Horse emblem could be classed as Ferrari's official color as it symbolized the town of Modena. These symbolic schemes, The Federation assigned the official colors of the racing cars depending on the nationality of the car manufacturer. This act made a history, and gave a visionary of systematic symbolization to become real. Today, the Italia red is recognizable worldwide: not just because of all the racing cups Ferrari gained or the company’s furtherance or its hot looking butt-shape, but there in the paint, the meaningful singular Italia red has deeply imbued on citizen’s remembrance.


5334794025 Wongsakorn Wattanavekin

(note: tee cant post due to his account problems, sorry sir)

The film uses various colors and other things as representation between nature and the reality world. Woman inside the film are represent as nature where she is always focus and the industrial background blur and grey so it became contrast with the woman. She seems to be mentally disorder as the story goes on which represent how natures contradict with the reality world which represents how nature is being destroyed by the material world. The ship in the film that came represents the diseases. Woman became crazier as she became more aware as the disease but she use imaginary world to cure her child from the disease. The red room in the story represent different world that change people emotion as they went into the room. We can see that people emotion change and became more relax as we can see the people inside the room starting taking off their ties.

Apisub Phupha
5334825825

The film Red Desert portrays the use of colors as a metaphor between the nature and the industrialized world through the main character. In the beginning the woman was dressed in green coat standing in the middle of a grey concrete factory in order to create a contrast between the two different worlds. The woman is a metaphor being destroyed by industrialization whereas the color red in the red room at the bar is used in a slightly different way. In the red room people tend to behave more relax and loose as seen when the man take off his neck tie. Red isn’t used as a symbolism to represent something like green in the first place but in this place it tends to change the mood of the people as well as separating the atmosphere between the inside and outside the room.

The film “Red Dessert” represented the different between nature and reality by using color and sound. The industrial scene goes gray and the main actress dress goes green have got the best contrast between each other. The industrial scene gray tone gives out an effective power to made the viewer get into the scene. And a sound that used in the industrial scene also gives more effect by made the machine sound louder than a human conversation, this made the scene look more reality unlike other movies that lower the machine sound so that human conversation can be hearable. As for the main actress’s green dress, the main actress has gone crazy so she try to dress contrast with the industrial scene which is a town that she lived in. So the main actress herself is a metaphor to gives out a meaning of a biological living things, in other word means nature.

In the film Red Desert, the impresario used colors to display a contrast between the real world that main character, Giuliana, lives and her imaginary world. In actual world, the city of Ravenna is covered by polluted waste from the machinery industrial factories; flowing white smoke and fog as well as are reflecting in pastel gray color. However, Giuliana were in a beautiful natural green coat which create a color contrast among custom and background and referred back to their concept of reality and imagination. The film runs with mainly monochromatic background until the scene where Giuliana tried to cure her son with her dreamed world story. In her imaginary world, there are beautiful landscape surround buy green land, blue sky and clean sea. It is the only scene that impresario use such a colorful background with beautiful nature and it created another color contrast in the film.

The Red Desert, by Michelangelo Antonioni was successfully introduce a clear contrast between the real world and the character's imaginary world by controlling the visual and acoustical aspects known as sound and colors. Through out the story, the director keep the sound very natural, by not mixing the sound much. The character's cloths always contrast with the grey-background, which symbolize the reality, an industrial world that make the main character mentally ill, in contrast with her own world, which is more colorful. This idea is emphasized the most in the part that Giuliana is trying to cure her son, by bringing in a more colorful imaginary world, while she live in a more monochromatic world. Another part is the Red room, that have an influence on the character's emotion and how they behave.

The method Michelangelo Antonioni employed to narrate the story, along with elucidating his concept is that Giuliana, as himself (Antonioni), is the only one who truly recognizes the epidemic changes of transforming context, the industrialized world, perhaps, as the situation of Hollywood that begun to monopolize the movie industry. Giuliana perception represents his idea of the dramatic change of society amidst of people whose aren’t recognizing it. (Somehow, in ‘The red desert’ she is helpless, but in reality Antonioni actually struggle toward this nature.) Unlike Hollywood, where to narrator is connected with the perception of audience, as they are performing in the movie; the audience, watching Hollywood films, tend to hypnotize themselves as the character in the movie.
Probably, one of the reasons which ‘The red desert’ is not come to success is that, by declaring something to audience in 3rd person perspective is not powerful compare to 1st person. It is lack of the ‘introduction’ which ‘Hollywood’ employed manifests the perception of the narrator with the audiences. Also the unfortunate nature of our perception toward color is not dominated in everyday context.

Patarapol Taechachokevivat
5334779625

The Michelangelo Antonioni's film, "Red desert", lead us to see differences between nature and the modern world by using colors. In one scene, a woman wearing green color clothes stood in front of the factory background. He used the fresh green color as the symbol of nature to distinguish the nature from the industrial world represented in grey. The grey color is a contrast to the lively and happy colors of nature. The grey color represents sorrow and depression. This idea was emphasized in the scene when the woman tries to help her son from illness with sudden display of lively colors. In addition, Antonioni tried to show that the nature is being intruded by industrial world and slowly pushed to edge. This was shown in the scene when the woman is becoming neurotic, trying to adapt to live in the modern world. The director also kept the sounds from a real industrial environment all through out the film to keep the atmosphere very realistic. He did not cut the sound out like many Hollywood films do.

Pakorn Nimityont 5131412521

The Red Desert Film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. It started with Giuliana who has been released from the hospital after having attempted suicide. While physically fine, she has found that she estranged from everyone and everything, particularly her own husband who has not understood and has not been there for her. The director introduced us to see the contrast between her real world and her imaginary world by colors. Everywhere else, color is very carefully calculated and arranged, with dynamic colorization correlating with Giuliana’s emotional states. Whether it’s painting in gray, Giuliana is in a green coat which shows the contrast between the nature and grey factory world. The color is constantly on the movie. Whether the action is taking place within in the town, in the home or outdoors, there is a mesh look, turning everything into an interesting piece of modern art. Antonioni sought to paint a film, more than to write it.

Chayan Satheerasilapin
513 12679 21

The Red Desert is the first film shot in color of Michelangelo Antonioni, who often referred to as a director whose work is not for all tastes. Antonioni uses color throughout to tantalize the viewer with higher possibilities. While the scenes set in the factories are mostly an undifferentiated gray, suddenly a splash of deep red will appear on a huge pipe in the foreground, as if the kind of depersonalization the factory represents can’t entirely overcome the life principle. But even seemingly positive colors can be threatening in this world. Most colorful is Giuliana’s inner life. In a sequence in which she tells her ailing son a story, the film moves entirely into her fantasy of a young girl. This pleasurable world, it seems, can only exist in story, and soon enough Giuliana is back in the real world in a state of nervous chaos. When everything is gray, the sudden eruption of color in a scene takes on new meaning since you can see that Giuliana’s hair color subtly changes in every scene she’s in. It ranges from a dark auburn to light blond, this shows a many ways of meaning via a color technique I mentioned above (I could say it’s “ Gray Power” technique.) And Antonioni does these things superbly, making every glance, facial tic, sigh, etc., count for something that is a throwaway in lesser films.

Atthanan Piyaseth
513 15098 21

The Red Desert, filmed by Michelangelo Antonioni, can be considered as a very confusing movie, it doesn’t show the meaning from the outer appearance but we must deeply analyze ,ourselves, the scene happening related to the emotion of the actor and actress. The director focused on using the color contrast along with a very stereotyped composition; adhered to the grid rule. Regardless to the plot, the director wants to emphasize how industrializing harms human, for example the scene where big cargo arrived and Giuliana’s child got suddenly leg handicap when the ship past away the child is back to normal. The Director also use colors to provoke the inner feeling such as the red room color where actor and actress are shifted away from their social mannerism and leading themselves into their primitive instinct and self needs. The film clearly expresses intension of director through comparison ,not the storyline.

Pridsadang Posanakul
5131361121

In the film “Red Desert”, we can observe the use of color as a distinguishing factor between nature and industrialization. In the beginning of the film, we can see that the portrayal of the woman is shown wearing bright green color. It can be conferred from this that the woman is this symbol of growth and nature while the dull and grey background emphasizes the industrialism present. The movie also called attention to the noise in the factories and boats in order to show the obvious nature of industrialism present throughout the film. The use of color is used as a way to cover up what the factory is producing waste into the environment. The woman portrayal throughout the film represents a biological being that is being destroyed by industrialism and driven mad by it. It is interesting that the film would represent her dream in full color as in way to show the large contrast between where she is and where she wants to be. The red room was also interesting in how it was incorporated with a more relaxed and care-free environment. Overall, the film uses the emphasis of color as a mean to bring attention to what is happening and the effects which it has to the items related to it.

Krittirat Jaroonwit
5131219821

“..it is a drug, but a drug that can intoxicate, poison or cure.” (Chromophobia, Chapter 3, page 71) The quote is referring color as a substance which can both causing a confusion to senses such that it hide the truth, “colour was against truth; it was both a denial of death and a fiction of a life.” (Barthes, Chromophobia, Chapter 3, page 53), and promoting the inner self of a person towards the society “faculty that can assemble colors in an enhancing manner…colour is a sign of civilization,…indicates a rise above nature..” (Baudelaires, Chromophobia, Chapter 3, page 55). I think that color really is a double edge sword, using it wisely will enhance the appearance while in the other hand color can degrade the appearance of surface it applies; if it was used unconsciously. For example, woman’s cosmetic, correctly applied, it will lift-up the facial highlight while masking away the impurities; this really enhances the beauty of a woman. Also, most celebrities who possessed very seductive shape applied red color lipstick to their mouth because it helps providing a facial appearance that allure and charming along with great body shape towards opposite sex; SEXY.,“Colour…never far from sexuality….when colour occurs, sex is often not too fat away” (Warhol, Chromophobia, Chapter 3, page 63).

Pridsadang Posanakul
5131361121

The Michelangelo Antonioni's film "Red desert" is a contrast color. He represented the different between nature and reality. And real color has been drained out of everything. The only colors we see in the film are manmade. Thick, bright, glossy paint coats everything from walls to houses to the pipes in the factories. There are no natural colors that contain any real texture or sensuality or warmth. Even the natural elements look unreal. The land is riddled with greenish muck, the sea is coated with muddy oil, and the sky is choking in clouds of frightening yellow smoke. The painted colors that we see throughout the town function like pink pebbles in a dirty goldfish bowl. It is a distraction that rapes one's senses.

Jarrunon Chuchart
5131249621

“Color is a lapse into decadence and recovery of innocence, a false addition to a surface and the truth beneath that surface.” (Chromophobia, Chapter 3, pg. 70)This line, for me, sums up the whole complexity that is color. It is capable of portraying an idea and also a misconception as well. The chapter tries to emphasize the concept that color is, in a way, dependent on how we perceive it. A quote from the chapter states that “color enhances a painting, but she is only a lady-in-waiting because all she does is to make still more attractive the true perfection of art.” (Chromophobia, Chapter 3, pg. 53) The quote shows how color is a mere addition to a concept, a cosmetic to a certain idea. However in the story of Des Esseintes, it states that “while cosmetics can both enhance beauty and conceal ugliness, they can also suffocate life.” (Chromophobia, Chapter 3, pg. 57) It its interesting how the earlier quote is stating how color is just a mere enhancement while the next quote is stating how color is capable to consuming life that is present in the object. Lastly, in the movie Pleasantville , “color is shown as permanent and irresistible; it cannot be rubbed out, only hidden beneath a monochrome mask.” This last statement shows how color is sometimes the truth and it is covered up with another layer of color to hide it. Color is in a class of its own when it comes to projecting or concealing an idea. It is a mean of disguise while also capable to portraying the truth.

Krittirat Jaroonwit
5131219821

Michelangelo Antonioni's 1964 film Red Desert is a bleak exploration of mental illness, alienation and environmental decay. The film is abstract and gives great example of the use of color, or an expressionistic or impressionistic work of art. The film is a picaresque, in some ways, as many of the scenes, at first blush, seem like mismatched jigsaw puzzle pieces, but, again, they do eventually cohere, and give a viewer some sense of why Giuliana has such difficulty in reacting naturally to life’s lessons. It takes, as example, the whole of the film for Giuliana to even get a grip on what plagues her, and this is alone at night, talking to a sailor on a pier who does not speak Italian. She cannot connect with Corrado, Ugo, nor even Valerio. Before that time the only other moment she seems at ease, if briefly, is at a weekend outing with friends, including Corrado. They go to a fishing shack on a pier, one with a red room and a bed, and an orgy seems ready to break out, until it does not. Instead, the moment ends with a doctor rushing aboard a ship outside, and ready to quarantine the area, as it is drenched in fog. Giuliana is so distressed she nearly drives her car off the end of the pier.

Kawin Niwatsakul 5131224921

In the film Red Desert, Michelangelo Antonioni used the contrast in color to represent the real world and the world that the female lead sees. The dark, gloomy color is used to represent the industrialization of Italy, and at the same represents how the female lead sees visualize that industrialized world. Michelangelo also used the bright colors to reflect how the female wanted her world to be like.

The movie also used noise to reflect industrialization. Most movies would subside the noise which contradicts the reality. But Michelangelo used noise in the movie to make the viewer experience the reality.

In the movie, even though the main story line seem so random but in each situation that happen there are a lot of hidden meaning and thing Antonioni wants to convey. Such as the scene when a boy gets sick when the ship arrive and totally cures when the ship leave. Antonioni want to tell us that industrial bring bad thing to us. And also I like the way he use the color in this movie like when the woman in green coat standing in front of a factory which has grayish environment or when people gather in the red room.

Natchana Boonsarng 5131290221

The film Red Desert, by Michelangelo Antonioni was highly expressive with the use of colors. This expression of colors used in this film was one of Antonioni’s first color masterworks, and shows us his passion in his illustration in the cinema history.
Every part of the frame of the film was carefully well thought out. From the streets in the film to the woods of the trees. They were shown in black to underline the filthy surroundings of the factories etc.
This was one of Antonioni’s strengths in film making. The ability to convey the powerful sense of location with his expressive use of colors. One scene which I could remember clearly was the opening scene, where everything was out of focus and it started to give me a an abstract sense of modern industrialization before the focused shot of the tower giving out flames into the sky.

Michelangelo Antonioni filmed “Red Desert” to represent the different between nature and the industrialized world using the combination of colors and sound. There is industrial kind of sound throughout the story whenever Antonioni tried to mean that the industrialized world is consuming the scene and the space around it. Smokes and gray colors are used as a color to create the same metaphor. The protagonist, Giuliana, is however different from this world. It is easily seen from the different in color of her dress and her attitude. Her inner self is very colorful, which Antonioni has showed that with the most colorful scene in the film when Giuliana is telling the story to her son. However, Giuliana and her son were being consumed more and more by the environment around. And it is interesting to see the fact that in sharing her colorfulness to her son can partially heals her son strange disease which in fact is the denial of the industrialized world.

Yotsanan Simakorn 513 14320 21

According to the chapter "Apocalypstick" of the article, it is said that "Color is a supplement, it is also, potentially, a seduction. Cosmetics make flesh more appealing flesh that may be tired or old, or flesh that may be diseased, disfigured, decayed or even dead." (page 52) I agree with this idea. Women always feel that they are monitored with beauty detectors and are worried about appearance all the time. It is said that "beauty could be distilled to a mathematical formula -- we appreciate symmetrical faces, in which the nose is so many millimeters from the eyes, in which the lips are in the right spot between the nose and the chin. These standards are different for male faces than for female faces. Researchers also believe that we're wired to find youth more attractive than old age, particularly when it comes to choosing a mate.."(Molly Edmonds) It shows that colors as cosmetics help in enhancing the appearance of women and make confidence.
Rather than seeing cosmetic as dishonest, I think it is what can make make women feel released, yet, feel pressured as well. It helps them feel more like they are able to attain a universal beauty ideal by concealing and supplementing. However, it also shows how women feel pressured to conform their standards of beauty. This somewhat makes people gradually forget about appreciating our own natural face and set our minds to have the same images of the ideal beauty which everyone seek for.

Also, As said in page 53 "it tricks us with padding and makeup and polish and clothes, so that people carry around beauty not their own to the neglect of the beauty properly theirs through gymnastics. Vulgar, deceitful, lazy, and dishonest, cosmetics perform their seductions while nobility of true beauty is found in the rigours of physical and moral discipline." This remind me of the feminism in the late 1960s and 70s that "By putting on makeup and dressing in a certain way, these feminists argued, women were only submitting to a patriarchal culture that sought to exploit them for their beauty, not their brain" This reflects the influence that makeup brings; it makes people value one's beauty more than over one's ability, making one forget that under makeup minds and brains are more important.

Panivarin Kongmahasanti
5234762825

“Colour is both a fall into nature, which may in turn be a fall from grace or a fall into grace, and against nature, which may result in a corruption of nature or freedom from its corrupting forces.” (Chromophobia, Chapter 3, pg. 71) this states the idea that color is not neutral, that color can be meaningful, and for me, a colour is not just something in its own right; it changes according to the colours around it like it’s been state that “Colour is uncertainty, doubt and change, …” (Chromophobia, Chapter 3, pg. 69) this quote somehow states that color does not have an exact meaning in it oneself but it can be expressed in many ways depending on its situation, location, space, and on how one would like to convey to ones. So color, for me, can be changed toward ones inner emotion, heart, and way of thinking. One quote form the chapter says that “…, colour had perhaps the greatest power of all: the power to be autonomous.” (Chromophobia, Chapter 3, pg. 55) my way of thinking is that colour can refer to power in sense of wide range of usage, let’s say colour represents many things for example; promotes security, relaxation, and can intellect energy, joyful, happiness while some response for sadness, depression, etc. Colour can express all of these by it own.

Atthanan Piyaseth
513 15098 21

This chapter Apocalypstick addresses up the fact that color is powerful. Color can act as cosmetics, painting and giving beauty to the surface of things. For this fact, “Colour is dangerous.” (Chromophobia, Chapter 3, pg. 51). According to Plato, cosmetic is rhetoric, “A fraudulent, baseborn, slavish knave; it tricks us with padding and makeup…” (Chromophobia, Chapter 3, pg. 53). This represents the one of the Fall of color that this chapter address. Nevertheless, Baudelaire sees that “…colour is a sign of civilization, not of its Fall; it speaks of nobility rather than of the ‘fraudulent’ and ‘baseborn'; an appreciation of colour indicates a rise above nature, not a fall into its lower strata.” (Chromophobia, Chapter 3, pg. 55). This tells that the power of color comes in both the good ways and the bad ways. This chapter also tells that color can generate life and other times take away. I agree to the fact and believe that this happens according to the perception and mood of the viewer for that color at the moment. As time changes, the mood changes, good may change to bad, and bad may change to good. So good or bad depends on the self-inner color of the viewer to reject or accept; for in the end, “we are color ourselves.” (Chromophobia, Chapter 3, pg. 70).

Yotsanan Simakorn 513 14320 21

“For cosmetic, colour is also always less than honest. There is an ambiguity in make-up; cosmetics can often confuse, cast doubt, mask or manipulate; they can produce illusions or deceptions”(Chromophobia, chapter 3, page52), this quote can refer that make-up can create the fool layer to hide something that one doesn’t want others to see or sense it. Make-up or cosmetics can draw the preferred picture that can convince others to catch and believe them without feeling irritated. This can be emphasized by the quote “Cosmetics make flesh more appealing, flesh that may be tired or old, or flesh that may be diseased, disfigured, decayed or even dead”(Chromophobia, chapter 3, page 52). Because People all want to see the beautiful sight by instinct, they need to hide disgust and present attractiveness instead. However, there is another quote that stated “Normality is clothed in black and white; colour is added and, for better or worse, it all begins to fall apart” (chromophobia, chapter 3, page 64). The quote mentioned that things without color are just normal or empty which is represented in black and white. When the colors are added, things are more attractive. However, with wrong pairings colors can degrade an ordinary object’s image.

Pakorn Nimityont 5131412521