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Video stills
The video Who is afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue is a montage of sequences taken from the movie „Jaws“ (1975) by Steven Spielberg. The video is reduced to all the sequences in which the three colors red, yellow and blue appear simultaneously.
Besides the abstraction the video follows the narrative order of the original movie. The video starts with the first scene in the homely and secure terrain of the family, followed by scenes at the beach and ending on high sea with the destruction of the shark.
The title Who is afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue refers to the 274 x 603 cm painting by Barnett Newman, which also has been attacked in 1982 in the Berlin National Gallery.
According to the painting's original size the video is projected in 274 cm x 603 cm.
In both works, in the painting as well in the video, the cause of fear is invisible. In the original movie “Jaws“ the threat is represented and embodied by a shark - a potential danger under the ocean’s surface. However the threat in Barnett Newmans „Who is afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue IV“ lies in the monumental vacuity of the paintings surface, the horror vacui. Both result in their destruction: the iconoclast demolishes the vast space in a painting and the shark detonates.
- Sascha Pohle
WHO IS AFRAID OF RED YELLOW AND BLUE