Every color has its stories... including RED*

Not far from a Munich auction house, TH, OK and PH sit together over a glass of wine on a mild early summer evening. The topic of the day: the possible acquisition of one of Naum Slutzky’s «Pebble Rings». The pros and cons are discussed. After a while, the group agrees – the ring’s quality is convincing, the issue thus concluded. Now seems like a good moment for asking a delicate question. The title TH has chosen for her planned exhibition at Die Neue Sammlung, made up of four letters and forming a word both in German and English, has been on the mind of all three present for weeks. Yet upon consultation of the world wide web and social media, the use of the four-letter word turns out to be somewhat problematic. Is there maybe a different title that could be used for the exhibition?

The question has been asked. TH falls silent. The first early summer thunderstorm breaks over Schwabing. Rain pelts down on the streets. The branches of the trees bend in the wind. People struggle with their umbrellas. Newspapers used for makeshift protection buckle under the masses of water. TH looks out of the window. How will she react? Is silence her answer? Minutes start to feel like hours. Then she begins speaking in a lively staccato voice: «I’ve got it — no problem — but I’m not going to tell you yet — it’s just a single word again — let me sleep on it a little while though — it has even fewer letters — I’ll tell you soon.» We sit together a little while longer. It’s stopped raining.
 
June passed, soon it was July. TH hadn’t been in touch.
Then, on one of those Tuesdays on which the week has just kicked off, but not yet found its rhythm, a call from TH. Her first sentence, an utter disaster: «It’s your fault!» So it had been wrong to ask the question after all. My adrenaline level shot through the roof in a mere few seconds. Stay calm, I told myself. There will be a solution. Then TH laughed her famous warm laugh at the other end of the line: «It’s your fault … and I think the new title is great. − Great and much better than the old one. It is: RED.»
 
Therese Hilbert. RED
 
RED. — Not black. — Not silver. — Not yellow.
These of course also belong to TH’s color spectrum, to her brooches and pendants.
 
Per definition, black and white are not really colors. And silver — strictly speaking — is the term used to describe a precious metal. According to Goethe, the Pythagoreans, members of the school of Pythagoras in the 6th century BCE, described the surface of solids as color.[1] So is silver a color after all? 2540 years later this notion has become more or less established.
 
We know of two terms used for silver in ancient Egypt. One is: moon metal. In many cultures the moon represents the female and the sun the male aspect. The French king Louis XIV and later also Augustus II the Strong of Saxony, seeking to emulate the French role model, impressively demonstrated this with their majestic sun cult.[2] A now almost forgotten fact is that in Christianity silver and the moon used to be associated with the Virgin Mary. The depiction of the Mother of God as the Woman of the Apocalypse frequently showed her with the moon under her feet.[3]
The other word used for silver in ancient Egypt translates as «white metal». Purified silver coming out of the separating chamber has the highest reflective properties of all known metals. It reflects 95% of visible light and is thus regarded to be the «whitest» of all the metals we use.[4] In contrast to this, its surface becomes black when it becomes «tarnished». The metal develops a film of silver sulfide. The annex sulfide describes the sulfur component which in combination with oxygen forms as a usually dark coating on the metal. As the 16th element in the periodic table, sulfur is described as having a lemon-yellow color at room temperature.
 
Yellow. TH’s body of works on the theme of the volcano are frequently interspersed by pieces that feature a light-yellow hue. In the eyes of someone familiar with volcanic activity, RED, yellow and black are intrinsically linked. Molten stone from the center of the earth − magma − emerges from the earth’s surface as glowing-red lava. As this slowly cools off it turns black in color. However, when cooled rapidly under certain chemical conditions inky black, volcanic glass − called obsidian − may be produced. «Obsidian», TH explains, is a «hard, black, glass-like material that creates very sharp edges when fractured, which is why in the past it was very well suited to making tools, such as arrowheads […] When I go looking for obsidian, I am very focused and excited. My eyes are lowered … the sky no longer exists, only the ground, what is below.»[5]
If a lot of gases are released during the cooling process, the lava foams and bubbles up such that the end result is the porous, sometimes whiteish-grey, brownish or at times black pumicite. TH uses pumice powder to treat the surfaces of her silver pieces. This gives them their characteristic texture, which appears almost soft.
Having considered these outward perspectives, everything in TH’s oeuvre suddenly makes sense: her use of silver as a material, the black and yellow hues she employs, and her decision for: Therese Hilbert. RED.
 
RED.
It may well be one of the oldest and first appellations for a color that we know.[6]
RED was the color used to fill the black outlines of prehistoric bulls in the Caves of Altamira (Spain) and Lascaux (France). These first reddish pigments were extracted from hematite, a red iron oxide. At times this was mixed with ground pumice stone as a binding agent.[7]
From at least the 2nd century BCE onwards, red dye, the so-called carmine, was produced from the pregnant female cochineal insects in parts of South America. Up until the 20th century, this cochineal was produced on the Canary Island of La Isla San Miguel de La Palma, to be used among other things for the production of cosmetics. It is still used for red lipstick to date.[8]
 
We know of very early reddish-brown body painting thanks to the finds of ancient mummies. Dried and ground-up leaves of the henna plant provided the coloring for these. In the 1990s, actors such as Demi Moore, singers like Madonna and Gwen Stefani of the American rock band No Doubt sparked a veritable cult following for this type of bodily adornment in the style of the Indian mehndi.[9] Its later increased use as a fashion accessory had little to do with the marital and funeral rites of indigenous cultures.
 
RED. The color most often used in national flags. Therese Hilbert was born in Zurich in the newly founded federal state of Switzerland, where she also took her first steps towards becoming a goldsmith. In 1848, the state placed a white cross in the center of a square (!) red flag as a background − not to be confused with the lengthwise rectangular Dannebrog flag of Denmark. Up until the end of World War II, RED was seen as having male connotations and as the color of strength. It was only then that RED was succeeded by blue in the marine uniforms. Among the flag-like means of recognition and communication there exists the inverse composition of the Swiss flag as the red cross on a white ground. It is the name giver of the international committee of the Red Cross, founded in 1876 based on the ideas of the Swiss businessman Jean-Henry Dunant and the general Guillaume Henri Dufour.
 
RED. Used in the public sphere as a signal color for example in traffic signs, walking figures on pedestrian traffic lights, or yellow-red pop-up cycle lanes painted onto roads in times of COVID-19. RED cars were long seen as easier to sell. Just as Racing Green will always be associated with the Jaguar E-Type, positive (driving) emotions were associated with the promising blue-RED of the Fiat Nuovo Cinquecento and the more sporty Giulietta by Alfa Romeo. Ferrari-RED stands for desirable sports bolides made in Italy and the dream of speed. RED showing through the car rims not only stands for the understatement of a German sports car manufacturer, but also for the safety offered by its brake systems. RED — a color of opposites.
 
RED. Creatives and industrial designers like to use all shades of the color.
The logo, or corporate identity, of Die Neue Sammlung, founded in 1925, has used RED for a long time. Yet RED may also be subject to trends and preferences specific to an era. RED is part of the culture of the 1920s: of Max and Bruno Taut’s New Architecture or that of the brothers Hans and Wassily Luckhardt, but also of Red Vienna and its cooperative housing complexes. RED is associated with the New Typography by Jan Tschichold and Johannes Molzahn as well as with the German Werkbund, the Munich Bund and the «Rote Gruppe» − the union of Communist artists in Germany led by George Grosz and John Heartfield. In the 1980s the Munich based graphic artist Pierre Mendell chose Japanese red, a type of vermillion, as the color for the logo of Die Neue Sammlung. Around 35 years later Mirko Borsche, who also created the graphic layout for the renowned Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazine as well as later that of the Magazine of the weekly Die Zeit, upped the proportion of yellow in the Die Neue Sammlung logo.
 
RED. The color enjoyed a veritable boom in the late 1960s / early 1970s when industrially dyed plastic made things such as the telephone «Grillo» by Siemens Italia and the radio receiver «RR127» by Brionvega possible, both designed in 1965 by Richard Sapper and Marco Zanuso. Who doesn’t know the portable typewriter «Valentine » created by Ettore Sottsass in 1969 together with Olivetti. Executed in RED, it provides the emotional background to legendary love letters said to have been written on this machine − how pale does the same machine look in a broken warm white in comparison. Is it not fitting, then, that the volume «Rote Gedichte» was first published by Reclam’s Universal Bibliothek under the number 18926 in 2006?[10]
Based on the seductive «Ruby-Lips» by Salvadore Dali (1936), Studio 65 designed the red lip sofa «Bocca» (1971), produced by Gufram. And Gaetano Pesce not only penned the seating object «La Mamma» (1969) in RED for B & B Italia, but also the module sofa «Tramonto a New York» (1980) for Cassina. A red setting sun above the skyscrapers of the American metropolis invites its counterpart to partake in a romantic sun downer.
 
Can we surmise that RED is one of the human race’s favorite colors? According to a 2014 study by the Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach conducted with 1000 adults aged 16 to 75, blue (40% of respondents) beat RED (19%) to the top spot, followed by green (18%).[11] A statistical survey carried out in 2007 with 171 British subjects at Newcastle University had already produced similar findings while taking into account 37 Chinese nationals who had only relocated to Great Britain a short while earlier.[12] TH’s favorite color is RED. She mostly dresses in black. It’s only her lipstick that is RED.
 
One of TH’s early pieces is a set of ear jewelry consisting of two pairs of cherries. Each pair is made up of a red and a translucent cherry. You hang them − as kids like to do − over your outer ear, one left and one right. This is also why they have no kind of fastening mechanism, no clip, no clutch, no screw system − there is no need for one. Based on the light RED color used, they look more like sour cherries than the sweet variety, but that doesn’t really matter here, if only that the cherries feature the nuance of RED that the artist loves the most.
A further piece is created around the same time: A halved apple, to be worn as a pendant, appears as an inedible, pomological rarity with its seemingly red flesh and the cast-in real apple core. A thin red layer of plastic forms the outer skin of the cut-open half of the fruit. Encased in this in a bed of transparent plastic this is the core, freed of the fruit flesh. The RED of the outer skin shines through the transparent plastic.
TH created the cherries and apple in connection with a fashion jewelry competition in Neugablonz in 1973. She submitted only the «apple half […] with a cast-in natural apple core».[13] It won her the first prize. She had only started studying in the Jewelry class of Hermann Jünger at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich one year earlier − at the time, Jünger was the advisor of the technical college Fachschule für Glas und Bijouterie in Kaufbeuren-Neugablonz. Bussi Buhs had been appointed to a lectureship for Artistic Plastics Engineering a short while earlier in 1971 and was heading the newly established study workshop for plastics at the Munich Academy. It was here that TH experimented with the artificial, synthetic material that offered a range of new possibilities. However, the «horrible smell» of liquid plastic caused her to stop utilizing the material in the end.[14]
 
From a botanical point of view, apples and cherries belong to the family of rosaceous plants. In popular belief the cherry tree stands for strength and fertility. Its white flowers symbolize purity and beauty. Popular belief also states that if cherry branches cut on Saint Barbara Day the 4th of December flower at Christmas this predicts that the woman who cut them will marry soon. Since the 1950s cherries as the symbol of sweet seduction have belonged to the repertoire of fashion accessories of petticoat and Rock’n’roll.
By contrast, the apple forms part of the triad of royal power symbols together with the crown and scepter. The bible features the apple as a fruit from the tree of knowledge carrying the curse that sees the first people ejected from paradise. In Durer’s famous 1507 painting «Adam and Eve» Adam is already holding the apple in his hands. 450 years later the image has changed: On a photograph a young strawberry blonde woman with lasciviously opened lips painted in RED lipstick wears TH’s apple half on a silver chain. The apple hangs in the middle of her décolleté, her breasts only just covered by a pink shirt unbuttoned down to her chest.
The statement image was produced by Regina Relang (1906–1989), the celebrated German fashion photographer who produced cover shots for «Die Dame», «Film und Frau» and the German «Madame». Using the tools of fashion photography current to her era, the then 67-year-old conveyed a theme of the feminist movement of 1968 that appears to still hold currency.[15] The result is much more than mere fashion photography. In the image context, Relang deciphered the apple half as the female vulva and thus placed TH’s apple pendant in a visual-erotic context.
 
Back to RED. The wiki-based dictionary «Wiktionary» lists 66 derived terms for RED as an adjective: from Amaranth red, red-blue via dark red, strawberry red, Falun red, red yellow, bright red, indian red and crimson red to poppy red and ox blood red as well as pink-red to wine-red and vermillion.[16] Everyone can add another variant including Jaipur red, coral red, orange red, Pompeian red, Titian red etc. In the Pantone system, it is the numbers «2035 or 2347»[17] that most closely resemble TH’s favorite RED hue. The sleeve of this volume provides an idea of the color in question.
 
For art historian PH it would be difficult to circumvent the greats of European cultural and art history, beginning with Giotto, who in the 14th century understood white as unfractured light, to Leonardo da Vinci, who a century later attempted to create a system of colors, to Isaac Newton, who built on the former’s system in the 18th century. Using a prism, Newton characterized the basic colors as RED, green and blue. In their sum they created white, or to be more precise white light, which brings us back to Giotto. At the turn of the 19th century Johann Wolfgang von Goethe expanded the canon to six basic colors, namely purple, red-yellow, yellow, green, blue and red-blue, with which he formed a color wheel. In the color wheel, purple forms the transition between the areas of «fantasy» and «prudence». Goethe gave this color section the attribute «beautiful». He characterized red-yellow as «noble». Pure yellow stood for the realm of «reason».
Nowadays, according to the German Wikipedia entry on the subject, we associate RED with warmth and energy. It is linked to the color of blood and thus equated with life. According to the here cited digital platform RED stands for joy, passion, love and eroticism, but also for aggression and anger. The entry closes with the pointer: embers are red.[18] (At which point I can also reveal the first proposed title of the exhibition as having been «Glut. Glow».) «In many cultures the red symbolizes both life and death − it is a beautiful and at the same time terrible paradox. In our modern language RED is a metaphor for fire, wilde and stormy feelings, for love … is standing for [Mars] the God of War and power.» And the same article states further «The Comanche use the same word − ‹ekapi› − for color, circle and red. Which suggests that the Native-American peoples regarded the concept to be something fundamental that comprised everything else.»[19] Maybe Goethe referred to exactly this when he wrote: «The most perfect color is red …»[20]
 
A long-stemmed red rose is seen as the pinnacle of perfection in the plant world. It is often given as a present symbolic of love on birthdays and Mother’s Day. Hildegard Knef, a chanson singer feted in post-war Germany, sang for the first time in 1968 − as well as together with Rock band Extrabreit thirty years later − that she wished «Rote Rosen» (red roses) would rain down on her. In TH’s oeuvre, the rose is not RED but formed from thin sheet silver, then mounted and worn as a brooch (1989). It is blackened, TH has taken away its thorns. The petals in their full splendor thus seem defenseless in comparison to those of the other members of its species.
The noncolor black has − how could things be any different − its own symbolism. On the platform «Designer in Action» under the heading «Design-Wissen» (design knowledge) you can find the contribution «Die Bedeutung der Farben» (The meaning of colors). About the color black you can read there that «in many cultural milieus, black stands for sophistication and formality, but also for negative aspects such as death, mourning, illness, bad luck, secrets and more (…).» In Africa, the text goes on to say, black is seen as «synonymous with masculinity».[21] TH broke the stem of a rose into several pieces, leaving it its thorns, and cast the pieces in silver. Afterwards she reassembled the pieces to form a long chain. When worn, the thorns impress themselves into the wearer’s neck.
 
Let’s return to RED. The British film director Derek Jarman, who examined the subject of colors closely and repeatedly, saw no other color as being as territorial as RED. In his words it «stakes out its territory.»[22] In nature, this occurs when a volcano erupts, when magma breaks its way and enlarges islands or buries houses, villages and cities. In the world shaped by the human hand, according to Jarman the town hall of Berlin, called the Rotes Rathaus, with its red brick façade, stands for an architecture that is defining in the above sense. Implanted into the townscape in 1869/70, the striking town house with its characteristic round arches provides a wide and domineering sight in the urban space. A tower further emphasizes its axial symmetry. The façade could hardly have been implemented in a grander way, political architecture could hardly be more demonstratively imposing.
 
According to Wikipedia[23], Germany has or had fifteen Red Towers alone – their function usually forming a part of city gates. One such tower has stood in the Bavarian town of Wasserburg as part of the medieval curtain wall since 1415. There used to also be one in Munich. Nowadays, the only thing left of the latter is the «Rote-Turm» -plaza named after the structure in the Sendling district of Munich. Why this excursus? On August the 10th, TH sent PH a photograph of an ox blood red tower in the Swiss Alps via WhatsApp. Vertically, the temporary wooden theatre tower is rhythmized by eight concave sections, horizontally it is four rows of round arches above each other. At times, their windows reflect the mountain landscape, at others the endless blue of the sky, at yet others the glass surface is a deep black and filled with a mysterious darkness. With its archaic look the tower is reminiscent of late antique-Byzantine structures such as San Vitale in Ravenna. It was built in 2005 as the venue of the Origen Festival Cultural on the 2300-meter high Julier Pass in the Swiss canton of Graubünden.[24]
 
In 1983 TH exhibited her work at «Schaufenster Nr. 34» in the poshy Maximilianstraße in Munich. Gabi Dziuba and Annette Rössle, former students at the Munich Academy, organized exhibitions of contemporary jewelry, or rather, studio jewelry, there from 1982 through to 1983. The idea had come from Munich-based artists.[25]
From 1971 through to 1974, Hermann Jünger and Hubertus von Skal had already attempted to capture the interest of Munich citizens with exceptional window display stagings with their Galerie Cardillac in the center of town (on the corner of Residenzstraße and Maximilianstraße). Von Skal’s «Schaufenster» installations were shown once more publicly in an entirely different context: In 1975, they served as a backdrop to his work in the exhibition «Hubertus von Skal. Goldschmiedearbeiten» held at Die Neue Sammlung.
The Maximilianstraße − that grand boulevard built in the mid-19th century according to the ideas by Georg Friedrich Christian Bürklein − was the home of the legendary Schumanns Bar, which is now domiciled on the Odeonsplatz, from 1983 to 2003. On the floor above it, the art dealer Richard Grimm founded the first Jewish Museum in Munich. In 2011, the journalist and author Karl Stankiewitz vividly described the atmosphere of the Prachtstraße. The following long excerpt is lifted from his description: «Lido girls from Paris danced in the ‹Nacht-Cabaret Intermezzo›, while a London scandal girl sang, and baby elephants made music. Vis-à-vis Trude Kollmann was in charge of the ‹Kleine Freiheit›, which turned into the leading cabaret stage of the city, and maybe even the country, with texts by Friedrich Holländer, Erich Kästner and Martin Morlock. His work here as an usher inspired Dieter Hildebrandt to implement his own cabaret plans. On the corner, the ‹Das Roma› attracted beautiful girls, visitors and protagonists of the nearby theatres and galleries, tourists, bohemians and notorious boulevard flaneurs. For many decades it was a hotspot to see and be seen for a ‹Schickeria› (cultural in-crowd), with the blue hour before sunset the preferred hour for a visit. What’s more, art business was increasingly conducted in the area. At times there were up to 20 shops and bel étage galleries that offered an internationally noted display window primarily for contemporary art. The young Heiner Friedrich popularized the ‹young vehement painting› here (Baselitz and some Beuys students, as well as American Pop Art). Otto van de Loo or the gallery Art in Progress by Ingvild Götz also played a pioneering role, discovering Andy Warhol before the museums did. Thirteen gallerists held a ‹long night of the arts› here every Thursday.»[26] The galleries all inaugurated their exhibitions on the first Thursday of the month[27] and in the time from 1976 to 1980 issued a shared publication on a special topic.[28] The last of these publications looked at color. Its sleeve was RED.
 
Let us look back to the year 1983 in which TH exhibited her work at «Schaufenstervitrine Nr. 34». It was the last exhibition in this exceptional space.[29] TH dressed the entire window in RED. She presented her «Die Dornenkrone» neck jewelry, created in 1983 using PVC, steel, brass, and which had a diameter of 450 mm. The metal has been varnished, the PVC dyed: in RED.[30] It is one of the few objects in her oeuvre with a title. And even though our cultural knowledge evokes other associations when it comes to a (display) window staged all in RED, TH chose the special form of presentation, the alluring RED on RED, for purely aesthetic reasons.[31] It was her first presentation using the color. This is now followed by «Therese Hilbert. RED»


>> Check here all Artworks by Therese Hilbert featured at Klimt02


Notes:

About the author

Dr. Petra Hölscher studied Art History, Romance Languages, German Literature and Industrial Anthropology at Christian-Albrechts-University in Kiel. In 1999 she initially worked at Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (State Art Collections Dresden), before moving to Munich to join Bayerische Verwaltung der staatlichen Schlösser Gärten und Seen (State Department for Bavaria’s castles, parks and lakes). In Dresden she was responsible for the main exhibition „Jugendstil in Dresden. Aufbruch in die Moderne“ at the Castle in 1999 and in Munich for the exhibition „Pracht und Zeremoniell. Die Möbel der Residenz München“ at the Munich Residence in 2002. In November 2002 she assumed her current position as a curator, since 2007 senior curator, at Die Neue Sammlung – The Design Museum (website: www.die-neue-sammlung.de). In this position she did and still does exhibitions about international Industrial Design and studio jewelry which is always accompanied by a publication – Anton Cepka, Thomas Gentille, Tone Vigeland, Jablonec ’68 and at least Therese Hilbert – as well she has written and co-authored numerous articles and books. She is also responsible for museum's acquisitions in both fields. 2005–2019 she gave lectures on design history at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University; 2009–2011 she was also asked by the Georg-Simon-Ohm-Hochschule in Nuremberg to teach. In 2020 she published with “Schmuck – Jewelry” the first publication about the jewelry collections for which Die Neue Sammlung is responsible and which are situated at Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich.