Abstract English
Pink. A controversial colour.
It seems as if there are only two ways to approach the colour: either with great enthusiasm, everything has to be pink - Barbie 2.0. Or a fundamental rejection, a hatred that no other colour evokes in this form. It evokes associations with frills, dolls, make-up and anything else that is girly.
Why is that? How is it possible that we feel so strongly how little neutral this colour is and how little we can escape its symbolic content?
Pink was not always linked to such one-dimensional associations. In fact, completely different ideas prevailed until 1930. In paintings, girls are often seen in light blue, as a reference to the Virgin Mary, to whom the colour blue was attributed. Boys wore pink, the colour of ‘little power’. Red was a colour with more masculine connotations, it stood for strength, power and royalty.
In the 1920s, large department stores began to recommend pink and light blue colours for children so that gender-specific clothing could be sold twice. During the Second World War, Nazi prisoners in concentration camps were labelled with signs. The ‘Yellow Star’ for Jewish people and the ‘Pink Angle’ for homosexual men are exemplary symbols. The ‘Pink Angle’ was used to show the prisoners that they were too feminine, too soft.
It was later used on a world-famous activist poster during the AIDS crisis in New York in the 1980s. With the slogan ‘Silence=Death’, Avram Finkelstein drew attention to the catastrophic situation that was neglected by the media. The pink triangle thus became a symbol of activism, especially in the LGBTQ+ community.
How did it happen that our associations with pink and rose have changed so drastically? How can one colour have so many contradictory meanings? Why is the colour now considered childish, silly and, according to Eva Heller, one of the most unpopular colours because it is attributed to the female gender? Does the reason lie in the history of the last 100 years? And can the colour be given a new meaning more quickly than in 100 years?
I want to know how political the colour really is. What does it tell us about the development of gender roles, sexism and discrimination? Can a single colour be representative of our entire patriarchal system?
Based on my theoretical work, I would like to design a print product that shows how politically charged the colour pink is. I would like to present pink in all its facets, both visually and in terms of content.
PDF der Thesis
Praxis
Mein Praktischer Teil der Bachelorarbeit besteht aus einem Kartenspiel. „Playing Pink“ vermittelt Wissen und bietet den Raum für Austausch und Diskussionen.
