In the glossary of Liz Wells’ book Photography a Critical Introduction the sublime is defined as “That which is grand, noble or outstanding.  In art the Sublime is associated with awe, deep emotional response, and even pain.”

When considering the Sublime in general I think of the ocean: inviting on a calm day; a place of great wonder and beauty; but simultaneously vast and dangerous.  Similarly, as a child I was constantly to be found sitting by the open fire, enthralled by the glorious glow of the captivating flames yet also in awe of its capacity to cause great devastation.

I often think of colour when I think of the Sublime; colour often evokes emotion for me and sometimes I can taste it too.  It is this emotional connection that makes me think of the Sublime when I see poppies: that intense red stirs a sense of pain in me that such a colour is impossible to capture, either by artificial recreation which never seems to be a true likeness, or in cutting the flower itself for viewing indoors; the delicate petals being so fragile that they barely survive the trip to the vase.  The association with loss of life in battle only intensifies what is already there.

Returning to art, I feel the same emotional connection to colour when viewing a Mark Rothko painting.  In the Tate series The Art of the Sublime, Philip Shaw describes how visitors to the 2009 Rothko exhibition at Tate Liverpool ‘observed the paintings with rapt attention’ and how they ‘may have been praying.’  He may well have seen me there, standing close to one of the paintings, its huge scale extending almost to the floor, inviting me to step into its swirling depths like a lake made purely of colour.  It is no surprise to me that there exists a chapel of Rothko paintings.  There is a simultaneously a sense of the sinister in the sombre reds, maroons and blacks alongside the feeling that despite the danger one could be numbly lured in by the intense beauty to calmly float away and be taken from the trials of modern life.

Light Red Over Black (1957)

References

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/the-sublime [accessed 26 December 2019]

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/the-sublime/philip-shaw-modernism-and-the-sublime-r1109219 [accessed 26 December 2019]