Elisabeth Kubler-Ross said there are five stages of emotions when people are faced with impending death. How did other artists record death as emotion? This gallery is about the relationship between colors and the emotions of death they expressed.
Auschwitz Prisoners, Hulton Archive, 1940-01-01, From the collection of: Getty Images
1.Denial In Between Black&White When a person meet the unexpected shock named DEATH, he deny the death instinctively to protect himself. This picture has been recorded when children just get to the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in a black-and-white shot. Black-and-white expresses the boundaries of good and evil, hope and despair, and life and death obviously. The children have such a precarious face because of their complex emotions between fear of the prison and relief of being with their friends. This black-and-white photo has recorded the faces of children who deny the reality in the boundary.
2.Anger In Red Man with anger to death expresses their anger directly to surrounding people or even God. Frida Kahlo, in a rage of a incident that drunken man killed his girlfriend by stabbing her over 20 times and said, "But I only gave her a few small nips", made this work reflecting a figure of her husband Diego and herself. She had suffered in her lifetime from polio, a traffic accident, and Diego's affair with her younger sister Cristina so that incident was anger itself. Within crumbled body and spirit, she has painted death as a rage and hatred in the red color.
The Song of the Shirt, Anna Blunden, 1829–1915, British, 1854, From the collection of: Yale Center for British Art
3.Bargaining In Green The angry man, who is not face reality at his life's end, starts trying a compromise. It is a last attempt to put the inevitable fact off. He intends to extend his life by making a vow of reliable behavior and great dedication. In the work "For Only One Short Hour", a woman prays earnestly toward heaven. Prayers to God of someone, living in front of death, is not a wish but a negotiation for one's life. The prayer, which is a request to solve the situation to almighty someone,is represented in relaxing light green color.
PH-638, Clyfford Still, 1934, From the collection of: Clyfford Still Museum
4.Depression In Blue The death of others is grief that cannot see someone anymore, however, the death of oneself is desperation of losing everything. What's in her mind? The blues in the woman's skin seems to represent death, but this death seems on the inside, because the eyes are blacked out corpse-like. This maybe is saying that on the inside, this girl has given up hope. It expresses depression and despair in cold blue color in her drooping body and the empty eyes.
After the Storm, Sarah Bernhardt, ca. 1876, From the collection of: National Museum of Women in the Arts
5.Acceptance In White 'Pieta' which expresses Maria and dead Jesus, gives inspiration to many other works. The death of God's son means sacrifice of the world and the Mother holding him means acceptance of son's death with resignation. It expresses state in pure white color that everything fade away after a total accepting the death. It becomes white as adding all color of three primary light. Color of white is the last resigned state after going through all the emotions include denial, anger, bargaining and depression just like 'After the Storm'.
Credits: All media
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