Red demands attention, whether it's the uniform of the Canadian Mounties or a bouquet of red roses. Cultural associations such as these, coupled with the physical property of red advancing in our perception, give it a dramatic effect, like a stimulant.

In this section, red is intensified through its monochromatic application in Claude Tousignant's flat one-colour painting and through non-traditional associations like Gathie Falk's line-up of boots, all red, in glossy ceramic.

Claude Tousignant
Monochrome Crimson, 1981
© Claude Tousignant

This large canvas is evenly painted with a flat plane of crimson. Quebec artist Claude Tousignant began painting monochrome work in 1956, a radical break even within the parameters of abstraction. Other artists would later become known for the same minimal expression, among them Robert Ryman and Brice Marden.
Tousignant returned to monochromatic experiments in the early 1980s and produced Monochrome Crimson . Pure colour is the essence of the work and frames the viewer's experience. How does it feel? There is nothing to alleviate the eye from the expanse of colour.
Monochrome Crimson highlights its four sides and flat surface, offering no other associations or meaning. Yet the painting allows for the viewer's emotional identification with the colour. This experience varies according to our personal make-up, needs, and imagination.

F.H. Varley
Gypsy Head, 1919
Reproduced courtesy of Estate of Kathleen G. McKay

The bright red mottled background, the fiery scarf, and the rust-coloured sweater set the tone for a feeling of earthiness and exoticism in Gypsy Head. Her dark skin tone, lips, and neck are highlighted by red, as if illuminated by a flame.
Throughout Varley's career, portraiture was his main interest. He was concerned with showing the inner truths of his subjects through interpretive gesture and colour, making correlations between colour and character. For Varley, red represented the basic element of human nature. In this work, he uses red tones to romanticize the gypsy: windblown, robust, strong, serene, of the earth.

Tony Cragg
Red S, 1983

This conglomeration of found red objects, collected in Toronto, is unified by colour and arrangement in the shape of an "S." Tony Cragg is concerned with how these objects signal technological development.
This form of urban archaeology looks at the objects themselves and what they are made of, and then considers how they came to be that way - for instance, the colour coding of products to meet consumer expectations or the change in colours after enduring a "life" and being touched by light, other materials, and humans.
Repeated reds suggest that the decision about colour is a response to industrial, commercial, or administrative priorities. Cragg draws with objects. This comes from the traditions of minimalism and conceptualism, where finding or fabricating recognizable objects and arranging them to provide new meaning is a common way of working. The S-shaped arrangement of objects suggests the urban landscape with its curving streets and many buildings.

Louise Bourgeois
Friendly Evidence, 1949
© Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bourgeois created this work in response to her separation from friends and family after moving to New York from France. It is one of approximately eighty wooden figures in a series, titled Personages (1945-55), that gave physical form to people she loved and missed.
The sculptures in the series were painted white, black, or the solid earthy red of Friendly Evidence, and were placed in groups, alluding to the difficulty of communication between individuals. Bourgeois uses materials and colours to embody her experiences, and has linked the red in Personages to violence and danger.
In spite of the material and formal variety of her work, Bourgeois has been faithful to a single subject throughout her long life: the pain of the human condition, understood through experiences that are both personal and universal. She claims to be an existentialist motivated by survival, as she puts it, "alleviating the anguish of fear, day by day, step by step."

Gathie Falk
Eight Red Boots, 1973

In 1970, Gathie Falk walked by a storefront and noted a glass display case filled with men's shoes. Everyday experiences like this one inspire her work. She celebrates ordinary events, like the wearing of shoes, and has memorialized these in ceramic.
Eight shiny red men's boots are encased in a red wooden cabinet. They appear creased and well-worn, facing the same direction, revealing their instep, the part we don't usually see. She gives us insight on how the boot was broken in, a memory of the foot in motion. There is an element of surprise in these red boots being so glossy. Objects that in reality would be taken for granted as worn leather are glamourized in their all-red display.