WEEKEND LECTURE: Elena Phipps: Cochineal Red: The Art of Color
From antiquity to the present day, color has been embedded with cultural meaning. Red—associated with blood, fire, fertility, and life force — was extremely difficult to achieve and always highly prized by cultures around the world. This lecture, in conjunction with the exhibition The Red that Colored the World presents the origin of the brilliant red colorant from a humble insect, cochineal, that thrived in the ancient Americas and after the opening of global trade in the 16th century by the Spanish and Portuguese, became the most important source of red color in art and industry, through-out the world. Drawing on examples ranging from Precolumbian textiles, French tapestries and Chinese hangings, as well as paintings by Rembrandt and VanGogh– the lecture presents research that documents the use of this red-colored treasure throughout the world and helped to form the storyline for the exhibition.
Elena Phipps, PhD in Precolumbian art history and archaeology was a conservator and curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for over 34 years. She co-curated several groundbreaking exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art including Tapestries and Silverwork from the Colonial Andes, 1520-1820 (in 1998) and The Interwoven Globe: World-wide textile trade, 1500-1800 (in 2013.) Dr. Phipps has written widely on the subject of textiles and color, including Cochineal Red: the art history of a color (Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2010). She is currently teaching textile history at UCLA in the Department of World Arts and Culture.
Location: Kershaw Auditorium
Price: Member $9 | General $12 or $7 with paid admission | Students $5 with valid I.D.
TICKETS: Online or onsite; Questions? E-mail programs@bowers.org or call 714.567.3677
Proceeds benifit Bowers Museum Education Programs. Tickets are non-refundable.
Image Credit: Detail, Sebastian Lopez de Arteaga, St. Michael and the Bull, c. 1650
Denver Art Museum Collection: Collection of Frederick and Jan Mayer, 1994.27
Photograph courtesy of the Denver Art Museum
