Reddy Set
The unbounded warmth of red has not the irresponsible appeal of
yellow, but rings inwardly with a determined and powerful
intensity. It glows in itself, maturely, and does not distribute
its vigour aimlessly.
The varied powers of red are very striking. By a skillful use of
it in its different shades, its fundamental tone may be made warm
or cold.
[Footnote: Of course every colour can be to some extent varied
between warm and cold, but no colour has so extensive a scale of
varieties as red.]
Light warm red has a certain similarity to medium yellow, alike
in texture and appeal, and gives a feeling of strength, vigour,
determination, triumph. In music, it is a sound of trumpets,
strong, harsh, and ringing.
Vermilion is a red with a feeling of sharpness, like glowing
steel which can be cooled by water. Vermilion is quenched by
blue, for it can support no mixture with a cold colour. More
accurately speaking, such a mixture produces what is called a
dirty colour, scorned by painters of today. But "dirt" as a
material object has its own inner appeal, and therefore to avoid
it in painting is as unjust and narrow as was the cry of
yesterday for pure colour. At the call of the inner need that
which is outwardly foul may be inwardly pure, and vice versa.
The two shades of red just discussed are similar to yellow,
except that they reach out less to the spectator. The glow of red
is within itself. For this reason it is a colour more beloved
than yellow, being frequently used in primitive and traditional
decoration, and also in peasant costumes, because in the open air
the harmony of red and green is very beautiful. Taken by itself
this red is material, and, like yellow, has no very deep appeal.
Only when combined with something nobler does it acquire this
deep appeal. It is dangerous to seek to deepen red by an
admixture of black, for black quenches the glow, or at least
reduces it considerably.
But there remains brown, unemotional, disinclined for movement.
An intermixture of red is outwardly barely audible, but there
rings out a powerful inner harmony. Skillful blending can produce
an inner appeal of extraordinary, indescribable beauty. The
vermilion now rings like a great trumpet, or thunders like a
drum.
Cool red (madder) like any other fundamentally cold colour, can
be deepened--especially by an intermixture of azure. The
character of the colour changes; the inward glow increases, the
active element gradually disappears. But this active element is
never so wholly absent as in deep green. There always remains a
hint of renewed vigour, somewhere out of sight, waiting for a
certain moment to burst forth afresh. In this lies the great
difference between a deepened red and a deepened blue, because in
red there is always a trace of the material. A parallel in music
are the sad, middle tones of a cello. A cold, light red contains
a very distinct bodily or material element, but it is always
pure, like the fresh beauty of the face of a young girl. The
singing notes of a violin express this exactly in music.
Warm red, intensified by a suitable yellow, is orange. This blend
brings red almost to the point of spreading out towards the
spectator. But the element of red is always sufficiently strong
to keep the colour from flippancy. Orange is like a man,
convinced of his own powers. Its note is that of the angelus, or
of an old violin.
Just as orange is red brought nearer to humanity by yellow, so
violet is red withdrawn from humanity by blue. But the red in
violet must be cold, for the spiritual need does not allow of a
mixture of warm red with cold blue.
Violet is therefore both in the physical and spiritual sense a
cooled red. It is consequently rather sad and ailing. It is worn
by old women, and in China as a sign of mourning. In music it is
an English horn, or the deep notes of wood instruments (e.g. a
bassoon).
[Footnote: Among artists one often hears the question, "How are
you?" answered gloomily by the words "Feeling very violet."]
The two last mentioned colours (orange and violet) are the fourth
and last pair of antitheses of the primitive colours. They stand
to each other in the same relation as the third antitheses--green
and red--i.e., as complementary colours.
As in a great circle, a serpent biting its own tail (the symbol
of eternity, of something without end) the six colours appear
that make up the three main antitheses. And to right and left
stand the two great possibilities of silence--death and birth.
Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions
It is clear that all I have said of these simple colours is very
provisional and general, and so also are those feelings (joy,
grief, etc.) which have been quoted as parallels of the colours.
For these feelings are only the material expressions of the soul.
Shades of colour, like those of sound, are of a much finer
texture and awake in the soul emotions too fine to be expressed
in words. Certainly each tone will find some probable expression
in words, but it will always be incomplete, and that part which
the word fails to express will not be unimportant but rather the
very kernel of its existence. For this reason words are, and will
always remain, only hints, mere suggestions of colours. In this
impossibility of expressing colour in words with the consequent
need for some other mode of expression lies the opportunity of
the art of the future. In this art among innumerable rich and
varied combinations there is one which is founded on firm fact,
and that is as follows. The actual expression of colour can be
achieved simultaneously by several forms of art, each art playing
its separate part, and producing a whole which exceeds in
richness and force any expression attainable by one art alone.
The immense possibilities of depth and strength to be gained by
combination or by discord between the various arts can be easily
realized. 
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