Commenting in the early 1960s on his decision to use pink in his paintings, artist Raffi Lavie said: “The pink followed white, which is an anti-color that I used because I grew tired of colors. I started using pink because I wanted a color that was outside the generally acceptable palette without being an anti-color.” This liminal positioning is what made pink the focus of a great many cultural, aesthetic and even moral debates throughout history.
The group exhibition SANSSOUCI (French for “carefree”), which opens in Maya Gallery on April 11 until May 4, is named after the pleasure palace built by King Frederick the Great of Prussia, whose sexual preference for men has been studied just as extensively as his military exploits. The Rococo art of Frederick’s time was awash with pink, a fact which angered its many critics and led them to compare the layering of paint on the canvas to the application of makeup. The exhibition, which features works by a variety of contemporary artists, is a tactile, sensual and freely associative journey through a small history of this ambiguous, subversive color.