EXPRESSIVE

  “Red narrates, red highlights, red beautifies brunettes but doesn’t blemish blondes, red embellishes, red loved, and red kills too – but it is not the color of mourning.”

            – Marie-Caroline Sainsaulieu, “Expressive Red”

What if the world turned red? Red, red, and red, with bits of white, orange and black. As if there were to be no mourning anymore. No lost words, no missed affection, no ungentle touching. Only relaxation, and the quiet smoothing of hair.

Take Degas’s “Combing the Hair,” for instance. No blue eyes, blue skies, blue bells. No broken bodies lying in green fields, no dead grasses on sandy shores. No snarled black tresses, no blonde roots showing. Only the comb’s whispers, your arm and hand caressing my hair.

 

Edgar Degas, Combing the Hair (La Coiffure), The National Gallery (Britain)