PINK

Pink is a pale red colour, which takes its name from the flower of the same name. According to surveys in Europe and the United States, pink is the colour most commonly associated with charm, politeness, sensitivity, tenderness, sweetness, childhood, the feminine, and the romantic. When combined with violet or black, it is associated with eroticism and seduction. Pink was first used as a colour name in the late 17th century.

Etymology

The color pink is named after the flowers called pinks, flowering plants in the genus Dianthus. The name derives from the frilled edge of the flowers—the verb "to pink" dates from the 14th century and means "to decorate with a perforated or punched pattern" (possibly from German "pinken" = to peck). As noted and referenced above, the word "pink" was first used as a noun to refer to the color known today as pink in the 17th century. The verb sense of the word "pink" continues to be used today in the name of the hand tool known as pinking shears.

Dianthus Caryophyllus

  

History, art and fashion in the 20th century
for more look at WikiPeda: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink

In the 20th century, pinks became bolder, brighter and more assertive, in part because of the invention of chemical dyes which did not fade. The pioneer in the creation of the new wave of pinks was the Italian designer Elsa Schiaparelli, (1890-1973) who was aligned with the artists of the surrealist movement, including Jean Cocteau. In 1931 she created a new variety of the color, called Shocking pink, made by mixing magenta with a small amount of white. She also created a scandal by launching a perfume of the same name, sold in a bottle in the shape of a woman's bust. Her fashions, co-designed with artists such as Cocteau, featured the new pinks.

In Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, inmates of concentration camps who were accused of homosexuality were forced to wear a pink triangle. Because of this, the pink triangle has become a symbol of the modern gay rights movement.

The transition to pink as a sexually differentiating color for girls occurred gradually, through the selective process of the marketplace, in the 1930s and 40s. In the 1920s, some groups had actually been describing pink as a masculine color, an equivalent of the red that was considered to be for men, but lighter for boys. But stores nonetheless found that people were increasingly choosing to buy pink for girls, and blue for boys, until this became an accepted norm in the 1940s.

Franz West "Flause" (1998); Aluminium

In 1973, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville created "Pink," a broadside meant to explore the notions of gender as associated with the color pink, for an American Institute of Graphic Arts exhibition about color. This was the only entry about the color pink. Various women including many in the Feminist Studio Workshop at the Woman's Building submitted entries exploring their association with the color. De Bretteville arranged the squares of paper to form a "quilt" from which posters were printed and disseminated throughout Los Angeles. She was often called "Pinky" as a result.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude's Surrounded Islands wrapped wooded islands in Miami's Biscayne Bay with 6,500,000 sq ft (600,000 m2) of bright pink fabric. Thomas von Taschitzki has said that "the monochrome pink wrappings"..."form a counterpoint to the small green wooded islands."

Many of Franz West's aluminium sculptures were often painted a bright pink, for example Sexualitätssymbol (Symbol of Sexuality). West has said that the pink was intended as an "outcry to nature".