Artists have used red to express passion, the warmth of the hearth, political determination, and the heat of social struggle. Red suggests emergency: the Red Cross, the red of the fire engine. Works in this section feature red shapes, patterns, and textures that communicate heat. Red-hot can also speak of a passionate emotional state, whether it's romantic love, spiritual devotion, or political commitment.

Blair Bruce
The Smiths, 1894

A group of men are hard at work forging metal. A close look at the surface of the canvas brings into view patterns of tiny red undulating lines. This red overlay highlights the central subject and produces a sense of vibration, like a mirage that communicates the intensity of heat waves on a hot summer's day. Yet there is no roaring fire. The contrast of the surrounding bright green grass and trees further intensifies the heat of the moment.
Blair uses the techniques of Impressionism that he learned in France to depict this subject of contemporary life.

Jean McEwen
Red Interlacings, 1961

Opaque and transparent layers of reds, yellows, and browns, give a sense of depth and liquidity in this non-representational painting. Jean McEwen was influenced by artists such as Paul-Émile Borduas and Jean-Paul Riopelle, who worked spontaneously, tapping into the unconscious, as did the French Surrealists of the 1920s.
In this work the artist intended no reference to nature, nor any lofty meaning. Rather the work is about the sensual effects of coloured texture, the result of the artist's method of letting one layer of paint lead to the next. He guides the process of layering, responding to the chromatic progress that he observes, sometimes building up a dozen layers. The subsequent texture and subtle tonal variation of the surface is glossy, marbled, and wrinkled. The undetermined nebulous space of McEwen's painting creates an experience of pure colour sensation.

Arshile Gorky,
Charred Beloved II, 1946, © Estate of Arshile Gorky / ADAGP (Paris) / SODRAC (Montreal) 2000

In this sorrowful work, Gorky mourns the destruction by fire of his studio. Thin black lines and small areas of yellow and red interrupt a background of greys and blacks of various densities. Swirls of grey allude to smoke and ashes, swirls of black to grief and emptiness. Gorky's draining of colour from the work is exceptional for this artist, who typically painted with bright colours.
Of all the works in the Red Show, Charred Beloved II features the least amount of red. Gorky was plagued by loss throughout his life. As a child growing up in Armenia, he witnessed the fragmentation of his family and the death of his mother as a result of persecution. But, however minimal, the red that is present carries significant symbolic and formal weight. In contrast to the localized yellow, applied in a thin wash, the red is bright and opaque.
Red can be symbolic of the beginnings of life, as well as endings: amid the bleak shades of greys and blacks, bright red provides a glimmer of hope.

Jane Ash Poitras
A Sacred Prayer for a Sacred Island, 1991

In the early 1990s, amidst land rights conflicts in Canada, came renewed attitudes of self-determination on the part of native peoples. During this period native artists produced work fuelled by politics and a quest for spiritual renewal. As an artist, Poitras sees herself playing a shamanic role in the cultural tradition of healing. A Sacred Prayer for a Sacred Island (1991) is a call to spiritual reclamation through the transformative power of the shaman.
The three-panel mixed-media work incorporates layers of handwriting, magazine cut-outs, newspaper clippings, and bold painted images. Traditionally the colour of revolution, red in this piece is the medium by which the healing power of ritual is invoked. The word "sacred" printed in red and repeated as a continuous band at the top of the centre panel is the title of this visual prayer. The artist's handwriting on the work cautions against the elimination of ritual. Drawings and hieroglyphics remind the viewer of the source of native iconography. A white buffalo is a symbol of spiritual renaissance and floats beside the sacred home of the tipi. Throughout the work, Jane Ash Poitras uses red to assert native identity in contemporary life.

Claude François
Saint Bonaventure, 1655

This work is a good example of the use of red in devotional images. Scholars believe that it may be, in fact, a self-portrait of the artist, Frère Luc, who spent a year in New France in the late seventeenth century. It depicts Saint Bonaventure (1221-1274) cloaked in red.
The red robe and cap, symbols of spirituality and devotion, indicate his position of authority as a cardinal of the Franciscan order. The redness of his lips, cheeks, eyes, and hands intensifies his embodied religious passion. He holds a pen and a leather-bound book, receiving the Divine Word in his devotional state, his head tilted, eyes gazing heavenward. Bonaventure was well known as a miracle-worker in his lifetime. He became a cult figure in the mid-fifteenth century and was canonized after the discovery that his head had not deteriorated in his grave.