Mauve

From Encyclopedia Jr, free information reference for Kids

Mauve (French form of Malva, "mallow") is a pale grayed pink-lilac color, one of many in the range of purples. .

[edit] Mauve

Displayed at right is the color mauve. It is more gray and more blue than a pale tint of magenta would be. It has been described as "dim" and "dusty." Many pale wildflowers called "blue" are actually mauve.

[edit] Discovery of Mauve

Main article: Mauveine

Mauve was first named in 1856. Chemist William Henry Perkin, then eighteen, was attempting to create artificial quinine. An unexpected residue caught his eye, which turned out to be the first aniline dye—specifically, mauveine, sometimes called aniline purple. Perkin was so successful in recommending his discovery to the dyestuffs industry that his biography by Simon Garfield is titled Mauve (2001).

[edit] Opera Mauve

At right is displayed the colour opera mauve.

The first recorded use of opera mauve as a colour name in English was in 1927. ^[1]

[edit] Use, symbolism and colloquial expressions

• The 1890s were sometimes referred to as the Georgian "Mauve Decade," because William Henry Perkin's aniline dye allowed the widespread use of that colour in fashion.
• Mauve became very popular in the 1890s and became associated with homosexuality because well known figures in the art world during that decade were gay such as author Oscar Wilde and artist Aubrey Beardsley. (By the 1950s, lavender came to symbolize homosexuality, and then pink beginning in the 1970s).
• The Mauve Decade was the title of a 1926 Thomas Beer (1889–1940) book about the 1890's in the United States. Beer, looking back on this time, believed the United States was moving away from its New England traditions to a time of "decay and meaningless phrases". He took the title from a quote from artist James Whistler: "Mauve is just pink trying to be purple."
• In the classic Bruce Robinson film Withnail and I, Montague Withnail declines his nephew's offer of sherry with the explanation "Oh dear no, no, no. I'd be sucked into his trap. One of us has got to stay on guard. He's so mauve we don't know what he's planning." He fears alcohol may cloud his judgement and weaken his determination to engineer a private encounter with Marwood (accused of mauveness in the quotation) on Monty's terms. Marwood wishes to avoid such an encounter on any terms, but regardless of this he is as unlikely as the viewer to understand any literal meaning in having this colourful adjective applied to him. Whether that uncertainty is its own explanation, given what we later come to know of Monty's (cruelly misinformed) understanding of Marwood's lifestyle choices, and Marwood's own ambiguous reaction in several scenes to Monty's advances, is a question left unanswered until much later, ironically in opposite ways in the minds of the two protagonists.
• In Hermetic Kaballism, the "false sephiroth" Da'ath is commonly associated with this color, largely owing to the writings of occultist Kenneth Grant.
• In the British science fiction TV show Doctor Who, mauve is the universal colour for danger.
• In an episode of the kids television series Hey Arnold! the protagonist Arnold and his friend Stinky name their go-cart the Mauve Avenger.
• Mauve is a commonly used color in stage lighting to represent sunsets.
• In Angels in America, Louis identifies the color of the sunset as "purple," to which Belize replies: "Purple? What kind of a homosexual are you, anyway? That's not purple, Mary, that color out there is mauve."

[edit] References

1. ^ Maerz and Paul A Dictionary of Color New York:1930 McGraw-Hill Page 200; Color Sample Page 107 Plate 42 Color Sample H5--Opera Mauve

[edit] See also

• List of colors
• Malvaria