Who is Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue is a video and a series of stamps with film scenes from the movie Jaws (1975) by Steven Spielberg. Each shows a moment in which the three primary colors red, yellow and blue appear at the same time.
The video is edited in the same narrative order as the original movie, starting with the opening in the family's cozy and safe house, followed by scenes in the city, on the beach, and ending at sea with the killing of the shark. In Jaws, the shark, as the embodiment of the threat, remains invisible beneath the surface of the sea. The stamps showing the final scene of the movie where the shark explodes, were printed through the Korea Post service. A second photo shows an open mouth and a single postal stamp with the same movie still lying on the tongue. In the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, the idea of a postage stamp being moistened by"body fluids inevitably triggers the notion of a potential danger of contamination.
Who is Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue refers to Barnett Newman's work of the same title, a series of four large-format paintings created between 1966 and 1970. The title was a provocation in a discourse of abstract painting of the time, which seeks to free color from its mere didactic use and show color that expresses itself. Two of Newman's paintings were the subject of vandalism in museums, in 1982 in the Berlin National Gallery and in 1986 in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. In both, in the painting as well as in Jaws, the events lead to destruction: the iconoclast destroys the vast space in a painting and the shark is blown up. Who is Afraid of Red, Yellow and Bl could also be a metaphor for our relationship with nature and the possible risks of other pandemic outbreaks in the future caused by factory farming, wildlife exploitation and habitiat loss.
exhibition view, Signals, Eunam Museum, Gwangju, 2021
photograph, 40 x 50 cm, color, 2021
Korea postal stamps color, 2021
photograph with film stills, 2015
photograph with film stills, 2015
When Barnett Newman's painting Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue IV was acquired by Berlin's Nationalgalerie in January 1982, art experts established that the painting causes anguish and the certain press produced cheap propaganda complaining about the high price, tax payers money, and its low artistic value due to just showing three colors.
The picture was heavily damaged on April 13, 1982 by a veterinary student who, according to the Berlin daily Bild Zeitung, claimed to have felt fear and felt so overpowered by it that he had to defend himself.
The student who destroyed the picture signed his deed 'Aktionskünstler, ein kleiner Beitrag zur Sauberkeit' ('Action-artist, a small contribution to purity'). He said he was convinced 'that Newman, had he been alive, would in some sense have shared my opinion. I feel that now, for the first time, the picture is really complete, because of what I have done.'
The picture was heavily damaged on April 13, 1982 by a veterinary student who, according to the Berlin daily Bild Zeitung, claimed to have felt fear and felt so overpowered by it that he had to defend himself.
The student who destroyed the picture signed his deed 'Aktionskünstler, ein kleiner Beitrag zur Sauberkeit' ('Action-artist, a small contribution to purity'). He said he was convinced 'that Newman, had he been alive, would in some sense have shared my opinion. I feel that now, for the first time, the picture is really complete, because of what I have done.'
Source: Peter Moritz Pickshaus, Kunstzerstörer, Hamburg, 1988