Colors by vi.ro3223

olours 1

"Colour and I are one. I am a painter" Paul Klee, 1914

Index Colour of light and pigments

A short History of pigments

History of colour in art

The 6,000-Year History of Blue

Yves Klein and the birth of the blue

The 20,000-Year-Old History of Red

The insect that painted Europe red

The invention of the colour purple

What Art History Tells Us about Colour of the Year

The History of The Colour Green in a Nutshell

A killer color... Could this wallpaper kill you?

A Brief History of the Colour Pink

Anish Kapoor and the “world’s pinkest pink”

Why black is such a positive colour

‘You could disappear into it’ The blackest black

Life and death united in the mother of all colours

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Colours of light and Pigments How We See Colour?

he inner surfaces of your eyes contain photoreceptors—specialized cells that are sensitive to light and relay messages to your brain. There are two types of photoreceptors: cones (which are sensitive to color) and rods (which are more sensitive to intensity). You are able to “see” an object when light from the object enters your eyes and strikes these photoreceptors. Some objects are luminous and give off their own light; all other objects can only be seen if they reflect light into your eyes. However, humans can only see visible light, a narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum (which also

includes non-visible radio waves, infrared light, ultraviolet light, X-rays, and gamma rays). In terms of wavelengths, visible light ranges from about 400 nm to 700 nm. Different wavelengths of light are perceived as different colors. For example, light with a wavelength of about 400 nm is seen as violet, and light with a wavelength of about 700 nm is seen as red. However, it is not typical to see light of a single wavelength. You are able to perceive all colors because there are three sets of cones in your eyes—one set that is most sensitive to red light, another that is most sensitive to green light, and a third that is most sensitive to blue light.

Primary Colours

Additive (Light) Colour Primaries

his is where colour can get a little confusing for some folks. There are two basic colour models that art and design students need to learn in order to have an expert command over color, whether doing print publications in graphic design or combining pigment for printing. These two colour models are: Light Colour Primaries (Red, Green, Blue) Pigment Colour Primaries (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow)

Some of you might be scratching your heads, asking, “Where is the Blue, Red, and Yellow model?” The artist colour wheel (based in blue, red, and yellow) predates modern science and was discovered by Newton’s prism experiments. Scientifically, this does not adequately address the true range of spectral colour. Upon discovering more about spectral colour and how wavelengths work with surfaces (reflection/absorption) and the human eye, the blue-red-yellow model is shifting to the cyan-magenta-yellow model. We DO, however, still use the RBY model for mixing paints, and it is the most common colour wheel students will typically find in art stores.

ed, green, and blue are the primary colors of light—they can be combined in different proportions to make all other colours. For example, red light and green light added together are seen as yellow light. This additive colour system is used by light sources, such as televisions and computer monitors, to create a wide range of colours. When different proportions of red, green, and blue light enter your eye, your brain is able to interpret the different combinations as different colours.

Subtractive (Pigment) Colour Primaries

Subtractive (Pigment) Cheat Sheet

owever, there is another set of primary colours with which you may be more familiar. The primary colours of pigment (also known as subtractive primaries) are used when producing colours from reflected light; for example, when mixing paint or using a colour printer. The primary colours of pigment are magenta, yellow, and cyan (commonly simplified as red, yellow, and blue). Pigments are chemicals that absorb selective wavelengths—they prevent certain wavelengths of light from being transmitted or reflected. Because paints contain pigments, when white light (which is composed of red, green, and blue light) shines on colored paint, only some of the wavelengths of light are reflected. For example, cyan paint absorbs red light but reflects blue and green light; yellow paint absorbs blue light but reflects red and green light. If cyan paint is mixed with yellow paint, you see green paint because both red and blue light are absorbed and only green light is reflected.

hese primaries are ultimately derived from the RGB model as secondary colors. The main reason they are promoted to having their own colour model is because it is from CMY that we can create all other printable colours. Remember that, ultimately, without the existence of RGB light wavelengths, we would see nothing. Colour is absorbed by and reflected off of media.

Because these colours are achieved via reflection, we assume a pure white ground as the base filter for pure colors. All colours added together = near black.

To achieve true black, pure black must be added, thus giving us the CMYK model (K=black). This is the standard colour model for most printing, thus graphics for print are typically prepared in “CMYK Mode.” While most printers recognize this model as the standard pigment model, the traditional artist Colour Wheel substitutes Blue as the Cyan primary and Red as the Magenta primary, resulting in slightly different secondary and tertiary results. 7

he story of pigments is a story of chance, experimentation and science but above all it is about providing human beings with the means by which to express themselves, and this has helped create some of our greatest artistic movements including the Renaissance, Impressionism and Modernism.

A Short History Of Pigments Creativity Born In The Caves

arly man used earth pigments on the cave walls such as yellow earth (Ochre), red earth (Ochre) and white chalk. Ochres are coloured clays that are found as soft deposits within the earth. Carbon (Lamp) black was also used, collected from the soot of burning animal fats. Probably the best known early paintings can be seen at Lascaux in France.

Getting Serious

igments were produced on a larger scale by the Egyptians and the Chinese. Earth colours were cleaned and washed increasing their strength and purity, and

new pigments appeared from minerals such as Malachite, Azurite and Cinnabar prized as the first known bright red. Egyptian Blue was first produced around 3,000 BC - a blue glass made from sand and copper which was ground into a powder. Vegetable dyes were also developed by the Egyptians, who discovered the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;lakeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; making process of producing pigment and the basis of this process is still used by Winsor & Newton today to produce Rose Madder Geniune. In China, the brilliant red that came from Vermilion was developed 2,000 years before it was used by the Romans. Tyrian Purple came to signify power and wealth and was used by both the Greeks and the Romans. It was complicated to make, cost a fortune and involved using the mucus from thousands of Murex snails. The Greeks also manufactured white lead,

the first fully opaque white – namely Flake White and Cremnitz White – which involvedstacking lead strips in a confined space amongst vinegar and animal dung. Nice pigment, not so nice smell.

Renaissance

ith the rebirth of interest in artistry, the Italians threw themselves into developing the range of earth pigments by roasting siennas and umbers to make the deep rich red of Burnt Sienna and the rich brown of Burnt Umber. Earth colours featured heavily in their painting technique, Terre Verte (Green Earth) being the principle under-painting colour for flesh tones. One of the most astonishing pigments came from the semi-precious stone lapis lazuli, found largely in Afghanistan, and used to produce Geniune Ultramarine. It allowed artists to create a deep rich blue and was the most expensive pigment in the world. Paintings that used it were considered a great luxury and led artists to use it to paint The Madonna’s clothing as a way of reflecting her status and power.

Modern Times, Modern Methods

he opening up of trade routes in the 18th century coupled with advances in technology and science allowed for greater experimentation. In 1704, a German colour maker Diesbach created Prussian Blue by accident in his laboratory and this became the first chemically synthesized colour. In 1828 a low cost blue was created by Jean-Baptiste Guimet called French Ultramarine. The artificial pigment is chemically identical to genuine ultramarine but physically finer and has none of the impurities of the lapis rock. The isolation of new elements in the late 18th century also played a part in providing new colours. Deposits of chrome in the USA in 1820 eased the manufacture of Chrome Yellow, a highly opaque low cost colour available in a variety of hues. The isolation of Zinc gave rise to Zinc Oxide which was used as an artists' white in preference to lead white as it was less hazardous and more permanent particularly in water colour.

However it lacked opacity until 1834 when Winsor & Newton developed a method of heating the oxide to increase its opacity. This new type of Zinc Oxide was called Chinese White. Alizarin is arguably the most important organic pigment of the 19th century. It was found as a colourant in the roots of the madder plant, but independent work in both Germany and Great Britain managed to duplicate it synthetically in the laboratory – the first time this had ever been achieved. This more affordable synthetic pigment provided a blue shade crimson of strong tinting strength and high transparency and was an immediate hit with artists.

Impressionism

he explosion of new pigments during the 19th century, the invention of the metal tube and the arrival of the railways all combined to accelerate this movement. Bright new colours in portable, stable tubes and a method of easy travelling around the country helped give rise to some of the world’s most beautiful paintings.

History of Colour in Art Artists invented the first pigments—a combination of soil, animal fat, burnt charcoal, and chalk—as early as 40,000 years ago, creating a basic palette of five colours: red, yellow, brown, black, and white.

ince then, the history of colour has been one of perpetual discovery, whether through exploration or scientific advancement. The invention of new pigments accompanied the developments of art history’s greatest movements— from the Renaissance to Impressionism—as artists experimented with colors never before seen in the history of painting.

Red

irst employed in prehistoric cave paintings, red ochre is one of the oldest pigments still in use. Found in iron-rich soil and first employed as an artistic material (as far as we know) in prehistoric cave paintings, red ochre is one of the

oldest pigments still in use. Centuries later, during the 16th and 17th centuries, the most popular red pigment came from a cochineal insect, a creature that could only be found on prickly-pear cacti in Mexico. These white bugs produced a potent red dye so sought-after by artists and patrons that it quickly became the third greatest import out of the “New World” (after gold and silver), as explains Victoria Finlay in A Brilliant History of Color in Art. Raphael, Rembrandt, and Rubens all used cochineal as a glaze, layering the pigment atop other reds (like red ochre) to increase their intensity. A non-toxic source for red pigment, the cochineal bug is still used to color lipsticks and blush today. 11

Purple

Green

he Impressionists—especially Monet—so adored the new hue that critics accused the painters of having “violettomania.” “I have finally discovered the true color of the atmosphere,” Claude Monet once declared. “It’s violet. Fresh air is violet.” The purple shadows and lavender specks of light that enliven Monet’s haystacks and waterlilies owe much to a little-known American portrait painter named John Goffe Rand. In 1841, Rand grew frustrated with the messy practice of storing paint in a pig’s bladder, which was the prevailing method for preserving pigments at the time, and invented a more practical and portable option: a collapsible paint tube made of tin. This enabled artists like Monet to paint plein air, easily transporting their color to outdoor locations to capture impressions of the environment, and in turn led to the production of nuanced, pre-mixed paint shades in tin tubes, such as Manganese Violet, the first affordable mauve-colored paint that meant artists no longer had to mix red and blue to make purple. The Impressionists—especially Monet—so adored the new hue that critics accused the painters of having “violettomania.”

Yellow

urner used the experimental watercolor Indian Yellow—a fluorescent paint derived from the urine of mango-fed cows. Few artists in history have been known for their use of yellow, though Joseph Mallord William Turner and Vincent van Gogh are the most notable exceptions. Turner so loved the color that contemporary critics mocked the British painter, writing that his images were “afflicted with jaundice,” and that the artist may have a vision disorder. For his sublime and sun-lit seascapes, Turner used the experimental watercolor Indian Yellow—a fluorescent paint derived from the urine of mango-fed cows (a practice banned less than a century later for its cruelty to animals). For brighter touches, Turner employed the synthetic Chrome Yellow, a lead-based pigment known to cause delirium. Vincent van Gogh also painted his starry nights and sunflowers with this vivid and joyful hue. “Oh yes! He loved yellow, did good Vincent, the painter from Holland, gleams of sunlight warming his soul, which detested fog,” wrote the painter Paul Gauguin of his friend and artistic companion.

reen pigments have been some of the most poisonous in history. While the color green evokes nature and renewal, its pigments have been some of the most poisonous in history. In 1775, the Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele invented a deadly hue, Scheele’s Green, a bright green pigment laced with the toxic chemical arsenic. Cheap to produce, Scheele’s Green became a sensation in the Victorian era, even though many suspected the color to be dangerous for artists and patrons alike. The French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte’s bedroom wallpaper even featured Scheele’s Green, and historians believe the pigment caused the revolutionary’s death in 1821. By the end of the 19th century, Paris Green—a similar mixture of copper and arsenic—replaced Scheele’s Green as a more durable alternative, enabling Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir to create vivid, emerald landscapes. Used as a rodenticide and an insecticide, Paris Green was still highly toxic, and may have been responsible for Cézanne’s diabetes and Monet’s blindness. Not surprisingly, it was eventually banned in the 1960s.

White

f all the pigments that have been banned over the centuries, the color most missed by painters is likely Lead White. Of all the pigments—Chrome Yellow, Scheele’s Green, Paris Green—that have been banned over the centuries, the color most missed by painters is likely Lead White. This hue could capture and reflect a gleam of light like no other, though its production was anything but glamorous. The 17th-century Dutch method for manufacturing the pigment involved layering cow and horse manure over lead and vinegar. After three months in a sealed room, these materials would combine to create flakes of pure white. While scientists in the late 19th century identified lead as poisonous, it wasn’t until 1978 that the United States banned the production of lead white paint. In this era, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Ryman, and Agnes Martin turned to titanium and zinc whites to create monochromatic white paintings, while artists like Dan Flavin bypassed pigments altogether in sculptures that emitted white light directly.

Black

he darkest pigment of the Old Masters, “bone black” is produced by burning animal bones in an air-free chamber. The darkest pigment found in Old Masters paintings is aptly named “bone black,” and is produced by burning animal bones in an air-free chamber. While the Impressionists avoided black paint—finding areas of darkness to be filled with color—American artists in the ’50s and ’60s returned to black with avengeance. Frank Stella, Richard Serra, and Ad Reinhardt all created monochromatic black paintings, stripping the canvas of any subject matter other than the paint itself. Taken together, these painters prove that black is as nuanced a color as any other, capable of many permutations, tones, and textures. Speaking about his practice in 1967, Reinhardt quoted the Japanese painter and printmaker Katsushika Hokusai, saying, “There is a black which is old and a black which is fresh. Lustrous black and dull black, black in sunlight and black in shadow.”

Blue

or hundreds of years, the cost of lapis lazuli rivaled even the price of gold. Ever since the Medieval era, painters have depicted the Virgin Mary in a bright blue robe, choosing the color not for its religious symbolism, but rather for its hefty price tag. Mary’s iconic hue—called ultramarine blue— comes from lapis lazuli, a gemstone that for centuries could only be found in a single mountain range in Afghanistan. This precious material achieved global popularity, adorning Egyptian funerary portraits, Iranian Qur’ans, and later the headdress in Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring (1665). For hundreds of years, the cost of lapis lazuli rivaled even the price of gold. In the 1950s, Yves Klein collaborated with a Parisian paint supplier to invent a synthetic version of ultramarine blue, and this color became the French artist’s signature. Explaining the appeal of this historic hue, Klein said, “Blue has no dimensions. It is beyond dimensions.” 13

The 6,000-Year History of Blue

Of all the colors, blue is the most liked by both men and women. It’s no surprise, then, that many artists—Louise Bourgeois, Yves Klein, and Wassily Kandinsky among them—have expressed preference for it.

ccording to psychologists, the popularity of the hue may take root in our evolutionary development. In the hunting-and-gathering days, those drawn to positive things—like, say, clear skies and clean water—were more likely to survive, and, over time, this preference for the color blue may have become hard-wired. Yet, scientifically speaking, the sky and the oceans aren’t really blue—or at least not in the same way the soil is brown or leaves are green. This posed a big problem for most of art history. You can’t take the blue of the sky, grind it up with a mortar and pestle, then throw it on a canvas. Unlike certain reds, browns, and yellows, blue pigment isn’t quite as easily made. 16

Found in small supply and sought after voraciously, blue pigments carry a rich history of scientific invention, global trade, and artistic workarounds. From the first synthetic pigments created in Ancient Egypt to new hues discovered in the past decade, these are the highlights of the story of blue in art.

Egyptian Blue

gyptian blue—the first color to be synthetically produced—was invented in Ancient Egypt around 2,200 B.C., around the same time the Great Pyramids were built.

To create the hue, Egyptians combined limestone and sand with a copper-containing mineral (such as azurite or malachite) and heated the solution to between 1470 and 1650 degrees fahrenheit. The end result was an opaque blue glass, which could be crushed up, combined with egg whites, glues, or gums, and made into a long-lasting paint or ceramic glaze. The process was easy to get wrong, and any mistake would result in a “glassy, green mess,” explains Victoria

Finlay in The Brilliant History of Color in Art (2014). While Egyptian blue remained popular throughout the Roman Empire, its complex method of production was forgotten as new blues came to market. In 2006, nearly two millennia later, conservation scientist Giovanni Verri made an accidental find that brought Egyptian blue back to the fore. Viewing a 2,500-year-old Greek marble basin under fluorescent lights, Verri was surprised to find that the vessel’s blue pigments began to glow—a signal that Egyptian blue emits infrared radiation.

This rare property enables scientists to find traces of the color in ancient artifacts, even after the pigment has been washed away or otherwise made invisible to the naked eye. Scientists outside of the field of conservation have also taken interest in Egyptian blue, adopting the pigment for biomedical analyses and laser development.

Blue glazed composition hippopotamus decorated with representations of aquatic plants. The British Museum, London.

Ultramarine

ometimes called “true blue,” ultramarine is made from the semiprecious gemstone lapis lazuli, which for centuries could only be found in a single mountain range in Afghanistan.

Egyptian traders began importing the stone as early as 6,000 years ago, using it to adorn jewelry and headdresses. Yet they never figured out how to make a vibrant pigment from it. Riddled with minerals such as calcite, pyrite, augite, and mica, lapis loses its potency when it is ground up, turning from a bright blue to a dull gray. Lapis first appeared as a “true blue” pigment in the 6th century, gracing Buddhist frescoes in Bamiyan, Afghanistan. Around 700 years later, the pigment traveled to Venice and soon became the most sought-after color in medieval Europe. For centuries, the cost of lapis rivaled the price of gold. Given its hefty price tag, the color was reserved for only the most important figures (namely, the Virgin Mary) and the most lucrative commissions (namely, the church). Legend has it that Michelangelo left his painting The Entombment (1500–01) unfinished because he could not generate the funds to buy ultramarine blue. Raphael used the pigment

scarcely, applying it above base layers of azurite when depicting the Virgin Mary’s blue robe. The Baroque master Johannes Vermeer, on the other hand, bought the color in spades, so much so that his indulgence pushed his family into debt. Given the high demand, in 1824, France’s Societé d’Encouragement offered a reward of 6,000 francs to anyone who could invent a synthetic version of ultramarine. A French chemist and a German professor both found the solution within weeks of one another, leaving the competition with contested results. Unsurprisingly, the French committee gave the award to the Frenchman and named the new pigment “French Ultramarine.”

The Virgin in Prayer, Sassoferrato, 1640-1650. The National Gallery, London.

Indigo

he colors of the rainbow (a.k.a. Roy G. Biv) have a clear outlier: indigo. Commonly considered a shade of blue, indigo is not a separate color in its own right, so why does it get its own band in the color spectrum? Indigo was a desired import throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, driving trade wars between European nations and the Americas, fueling the African slave trade, and even partially funding the American Revolutionary War. A natural dye rather than a pigment for painting, indigo was used to color fabrics, clothing, yarns, and luxurious tapestries. Unlike lapis lazuli, whose rarity drove its high prices, the indigo crop could be grown in excess and produced across the world, from India to South Carolina. 17

Indigo dyeing was especially popular in England, home to physicist Sir Isaac Newton. Newton, who introduced the term “color spectrum,” believed that the rainbow should consist of seven distinct colors to match the seven days of the week, the seven notes in the musical scale, and the seven known planets. Confronting the fact that the rainbow only displayed five unique colors, Newton pushed indigo, along with orange, much to the dismay of some contemporary scientists. Synthetic indigo, developed in 1880, largely replaced the natural crop by 1913; this is the pigment that dyes your blue jeans. Over the past decade, scientists have introduced a competitor to the market: Escherichia coli bacteria that is custom-engineered to produce the same chemical reaction that makes indigo in plants. This method, called “bio-indigo,” will likely play a big part in the environmentally friendly denim of the future.

Tye-dyed cloth (adire oniko) with full moon (osu bamba). Seattle Art Museum.

Prussian Blue

ne year before Newton published his first report on the seven colors of the rainbow in Opticks (1704), a new blue was invented in Berlin, Germany. The dye-maker Johann Jacob Diesbach was working on a cochineal red pigment when he disregarded the fact that one of his materials, potash, had come in contact with animal blood. He figured that red mixed with red would simply create more red. Surprisingly, this was not the case, and his red dye emerged as a potent blue. The animal blood had spurred an unlikely chemical reaction, which created the compound iron ferrocyanide, now known in German as the color Berliner Blau or, in English, as Prussian blue. French Rococo painter Jean-Antoine Watteau, Japanese woodblockprintmaker Katsushika Hokusai, and the Spanish master Pablo Picasso in his Blue Period all used the color extensively. However, the success of Prussian blue goes beyond its role as a pigment. In 1842, the English astronomer Sir John

Herschel discovered that Prussian blue had a unique sensitivity to light, which could be manipulated to create copies of a single drawing. Herschel’s method of image reproduction proved invaluable to architects, who for the first time could easily create multiple versions of their building plans, aptly named “blueprints” after their Prussian blue coloring. In contemporary medicine, Prussian blue has a very different purpose: It’s delivered in pill form as an antidote to heavy-metal poisoning.

María de los Dolores Collado and Echagüe, Duchess of Bailén, Vicente Palmaroli y González, c1870. The Prado Museum.

Realization of an anthropometry, 1960 Yves Klein Archive.

International Klein Blue

n the summer of 1947, French artist Yves Klein was just 19 years old, sitting on the beach with his friends Claude Pascal (who later became a poet) and Armand Fernandez (who later became an artist). As the story goes, the three of them began to brainstorm how they would divide up the world: Pascal would take the air, Fernandez would have the land, and Klein wanted the sky. Klein’s pursuit of the sky’s expansiveness would come to define his artistic career, and, in 1957, he began to work almost exclusively with

the color blue. “Blue has no dimensions. It is beyond dimensions,” he once said. The artist began by spraypainting entire canvases, everyday objects, and casts of ancient sculptures with French Ultramarine, which had been invented about a century before. Working with a paint dealer in Paris, Klein created a matte version of ultramarine and patented his new method of pigment production under the name International Klein Blue, or IKB, in 1960. While Klein is perhaps the most famous painter to riff on ultramarine, one of history’s most expensive pigments, he is far from the only one. Inspired by Klein, the filmmaker and author Derek Jarman created the moving picture Blue (1993), which projected the same shade of ultramarine blue for 75 minutes, punctuated by a haunting soundtrack of ticking clocks, choral singing, and poetry and storytelling recited by actors and Jarman himself. More recently, in his installation Seizure (2008/2013), the British artist Roger Hiorns covered an abandoned London apartment with bright blue crystals, while the German artist Katharina Fritsch presented Hahn/Cock (2013), a giant sculpture of a rooster painted bright ultramarine in Trafalgar Square.

A New Discovery: YInMn

russian blue is not the only blue pigment to be discovered by accident. In 2009, the chemist Mas Subramanian and his students at Oregon State University were investigating new materials that could be used for manufacturing electronics. A graduate student noticed that one of their samples turned a bright blue color when heated, to which Subramanian responded, “Luck favors the alert mind,” a quote from Louis Pasteur. They named the color YInMn blue, after its chemical makeup of yttrium, indium, and manganese, and they released the pigment for commercial use in June 2016. Durable, safe, and easy to produce, the color also has a cooling property, so it may be used in environmentally friendly roof construction in the future. Of course, Subramanian sent samples of the pigment to artists, too. 19

Yves Klein and the birth of the blue

ne summer’s day in 1947, three young men were sitting on a beach in Nice in the south of France. To pass the time, they decided to play a game and divide up the world between them. One chose the animal kingdom, another the province of plants. The third man opted for the mineral realm, before lying back and staring up at the ultramarine infinity of the heavens. Then, with the contentment of someone who had suddenly decided what course his life should take, he turned to his friends and announced, “The blue sky is my first artwork.” That man was Yves Klein, whom the New Yorker’s art critic Peter Schjeldahl described in 2010 as “the last French artist of major international consequence”. In a period of prodigious creativity lasting from 20

The Frenchman was an artist, showman and inventor – who created a hue that had never existed before. How did he achieve this?

1954 to his death from a third heart attack at the age of 34 in 1962, Klein altered the course of Western art. He did so thanks to his commitment to the spiritually uplifting power of colour: gold, rose, but above all, blue. In fact, his chromatic devotion was so profound that in 1960 he patented a colour of his own invention, which he called International Klein Blue.

Razzle dazzle

orn in 1928 with two painters for parents, Klein always displayed a penchant for showmanship. He loved magic as well as the arcane rituals of the mystical Rosicrucian society, and the influence of both would later manifest itself in his work. After spending a year and a half

Left - Victory of Samothrace S 9, Yves Klein, 1962. The Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid. Right- Photography of Yves Klein’s performance “Anthopometries of the blue Period” 1960. International Gallery of Contemporary Art, Paris.

in the early 1950s mastering judo in Japan, where he earned a black belt, he eventually settled in Paris and devoted himself to art. His first exhibition of monochrome paintings in various colours was held in the private showrooms of a Parisian publishing house in 1955. His short career was characterised by many radical gestures, often touched with his flair for spectacle. To celebrate the opening of a solo exhibition in 1957, for instance, he released 1,001 helium-filled blue balloons in the St-Germain-des-Prés district of Paris.

The following year, an exhibition now known as ‘The Void’ consisted of nothing more than an empty gallery – yet it attracted a crowd of 2,500 people that had to be dispersed by police. Leap Into the Void, his famous blackand-white photograph of 1960, presents Klein soaring upwards from the parapet of a building like a Left Bank Superman. Like all feats of magic, though, the photograph is actually a trick: in this case a montage, so that the tarpaulin held by some friends, which would have softened Klein’s landing, has disappeared.

Perhaps his most notorious performance, though, occurred in March 1960, at the opening of his Anthropometries of the Blue Epoch exhibition in Paris. On this occasion, footage of which can be viewed online, Klein appeared before an audience wearing a formal tailcoat and white bowtie. While nine musicians played his Monotone-Silence Symphony (a single note drawn out for 20 minutes, followed by a further 20 minutes of quiet), Klein directed three naked models as they covered themselves with sticky blue

paint, before imprinting images of their bodies upon a white canvas. The models had become, he said, “living brushes”. “The genius of Klein is becoming more and more apparent,” says Catherine Wood, Tate Modern’s curator of contemporary art and performance. “He has been dismissed by some art historians as a charlatan or – because of his use of naked female models – as conventional and sexist, but his strategies were playfully critical and are becoming more significant in their influence for the younger generation. It could be argued that he was a critical prankster on par with Duchamp.” 22

Expanding the spectrum

or all his influence on conceptual art, though, Klein was most preoccupied with colour. As early as 1956, while on holiday in Nice, he experimented with a polymer binder to preserve the luminescence and powdery texture of raw yet unstable ultramarine pigment. He would eventually patent his formula as International Klein Blue (IKB) in 1960. Before that, though, he made his name with an exhibition held in Milan in January 1957 that included 11 of his unframed, identical signature blue mono-

chromes, one of which was bought by the Italian artist Lucio Fontana. This show ushered in what Klein called his “Blue Revolution”, and soon he was slapping IKB onto all sorts of objects, such as sponges, globes and busts of Venus. Even his ‘living brushes’ dipped their flesh in IKB. Art historians still debate the significance of Klein’s use of ultramarine. For some, it represented a break with angst-ridden abstraction, which was popular in the wake of World War II. Painted mechanically using a roller, Klein’s flat, blank monochromes seemed to rebuff expressionist art.

For other scholars, though, Klein’s depthless monochromes and obsession with ‘the void’ can be understood as expressions of the threat of nuclear holocaust. “We absolutely must realise – and this is no exaggeration – that we are living in the atomic age,” Klein once said, “where all physical matter can vanish from one day to the next to surrender its place to what we can envision as the most abstract.” Yet perhaps his love of blue is less specific and more profound. Klein was a pious Catholic, and in religious art blue often represents eternity and godliness. For instance, Giotto, whom Klein admired, was a brilliant advocate of blue. Klein’s ultramarine monochromes are not overtly Christian, but he certainly

used the sensuousness of IKB to suggest spirituality. As he once said, “At first there is nothing, then there is a profound nothingness, after that a blue profundity.” Certainly, his rich, radiant monochromes share a singular characteristic: they all have a vertiginous quality that seems to suck us out of reality towards another, immaterial dimension. The effect of looking at them is not dissimilar to meditating upon a deep azure sky – something that Klein perhaps intuited as a young man, on that beach in Nice in 1947. When considering Klein, then, it is important to remember that for all his stunts and attention-grabbing performances he was a sensualist

as much as a provocateur – and that this accounts for his fondness for colour. “For Klein, pure colour offered a way of using art not as a means of painting a picture, but as a way of creating a spiritual, almost alchemical experience, beyond time, approaching the immaterial,” explains Kerry Brougher, who curated the major retrospective Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC, in 2010. “Out of all the colours Klein used, ultramarine blue became the most important. Unlike many other colours, which create opaque blockages, ultramarine shimmers and glows, seemingly opening up to immaterial realms. Klein’s blue monochromes are not paintings but experiences, passageways leading to the void.”

Left - Large Blue Anthropometry (ANT 105), Yves Klein, c1960. Guggenheim Bilbao Museum. Right- Portrait of Yves Klein during the shooting of Peter Morley “The Heartbeat of France”. 1961. Yves Klein Archive

The 20,000-Year-Old History of Red “Red,” writes historian Michel Pastoureau in Red: The History of a Colour, “is the archetypal color, the first color humans mastered, fabricated, reproduced, and broke down into different shades.”

s such, it dominated visual culture for centuries. With the advent of the Protestant Reformation, however, people began to view the shade as gaudy, even immoral, and its preeminence began to fade. Today, both blue and green surpass red as the West’s favorite colours. But the bold hue—whether crimson, vermilion, cardinal, or scarlet—still retains power. Red artworks fetch the highest prices at auction. Red is the color of revolution, of seduction. And its story is far from over. The scientists who last year announced the discovery of a new blue pigment are now hunting for a never-before-seen 26

red. From some of humanity’s earliest cave paintings to Mark Rothko’s immersive abstract canvases, here is a brief history of red in art.

Red Ochre

ed has been part of our palette since the very beginning of human history. Ochre—a naturally occurring pigment that is the source of earthy shades of brown, orange, and yellow—is red when it is composed of hematite.

Neanderthals were using red ochre as far back as 250,000 years ago, in a region that has since become the Netherlands. Some scientists believe that these early cultures applied the color to their bodies as decoration; others think it may have been used in more practical ways, perhaps as an adhesive or a method of softening animal hides. Later, during the Upper Paleolithic period, early artists began employing the pigment as paint. The dusky red bison dotting the cave walls of Altamira in Spain are some of the oldest, dated between 20,000 and 14,000 BC.

Cinnabar

Vermilion

y the time pharaohs ruled Egypt, the number of reds used in artmaking had multiplied to include cinnabar, a natural mercuric sulfide that was also incredibly toxic. (The mercury mine in Almadén, Spain, where Rome later extracted its cinnabar, was basically a death sentence for workers.) Ancient Romans loved the brilliant red pigment, a preference reflected in its high prices during that time. Pliny the Younger wrote that cinnabar cost 15 times more than red ochre from Africa and was equal in price to the precious Egyptian blue. Gladiators who emerged victorious from the Colosseum might be smeared with the shiny red mineral and then paraded through the streets of Rome. Cinnabar is also prominently featured in the murals that grace the walls of upper-class villas in Pompeii. Cinnabar later became synonymous with the carved lacquer produced in China beginning in the 12th century. These elaborately patterned luxury items, which could be anything from vases to incense holders, were typically colored with the powdery red pigment that gave them its name.

Minium

ike cinnabar, minium (also called “red lead”) is a highly poisonous material. Scholars consider it one of the first synthetic pigments, with Romans heating white lead to extreme temperatures to produce the paint. Its eye-popping orange shade showed up well against marble and gold, and it was often used for inscriptions. Later, medieval illustrators would employ the pigment in their illuminated manuscripts. But it was most popular with Mughal artists from India and Persia in the 17th and 18th centuries—so much so that their paintings became known as “miniatures,” after the minium that accented their works. Vincent van Gogh was an avid user of red lead, a decision that has frustrated conservators centuries later. As it turns out, minium “whitens” under light, and many of the Dutch painter’s most famous works have seen their red accents fade over time.

his is where names start to get tricky. Ancient authors used the word “vermilion” to describe the pigment made from grinding up cinnabar. But vermilion also refers to the synthetic version of the color, invented in China thousands of years before it was brought to the West by Arab alchemists during the Middle Ages. This vermillion was used extensively by Renaissance painters, including Titian, who is renowned for his luxuriant reds. Although the pigment is normally an orangey-red, when exposed to sunlight it can darken to black. Vermilion became increasingly popular beginning in the 16th century, and the industry for the pigment boomed—first in Venice, and later in the Netherlands and Germany. It appeared on shelves everywhere from hardware stores to apothecaries to paint shops. In the end, although it was pricier and less stable than minium, vermilion won out in a battle of the reds. 27

Carmine

Lithol

ochineal bugs were the third most valuable export from the New World in the 16th century, right behind gold and silver. These white, pellet-shaped insects didn’t look like much when attached to the pads of Mexico’s prickly pear cacti, but when dried and crushed they produced a vivid red hue that would take Europe by storm. Although originally a dye, cochineal was soon transformed into a paint called “carmine,” which took up residence in 15th- and 16th-century painters’ palettes—Rembrandt, Anthony van Dyck, Rubens, and Vermeer among them. It persisted into later centuries, with artists including J.M.W. Turner and Thomas Gainsborough incorporating the paint into their works. Although carmine produced a rich crimson glaze, often used on top of other reds like vermilion, it also had a tendency to fade in sunlight. The compositions of 18th-century portrait painter Joshua Reynolds fell victim to this phenomenon; his subjects look pale and ghostly today, more like marble sculptures than living beings.

Cadmium Red

t would be several centuries before the next major innovation in red pigment came along. In 1817, a German chemist uncovered a new element, cadmium, which became the foundation for new shades of yellow and orange paint. But it wasn’t until 1910 that cadmium red was available as a commercial product, offering an alternative to the traditional vermilion. Henri Matisse was the first major champion of the new pigment, trying in vain to get his friend Renoir to make the switch. Like most Impressionist painters, Renoir was loyal to his original palette. (Since the plein air technique favored by Impressionists privileged speed, it was helpful to know exactly how paints would mix together.) When Matisse loaned him a tube of cadmium red, the older painter responded, “It is very irksome to change,” and promptly returned the paint.

n the late 1940s, Jackson Pollock started splattering commercial house paint across his canvases in huge, sweeping gestures. These iconic works offer a striking and high-profile example of artists’ increasing experimentation with materials throughout the mid-20th century. Rothko, too, dabbled with untested pigments in his work with various results. In 1962, he incorporated two brandnew organic reds into his palette for a series of murals at Harvard University. One of these pigments, Naphthol, had no ill effects. But Rothko’s other choice, Lithol, eventually doomed the works. Still in use today as a low-cost ink in the printing industry, Lithol red is highly sensitive to light. After several years hanging in the university’s penthouse dining room, Rothko’s deep reds and pinks had faded to light blue. By 1979, the paintings were so damaged that they had to be permanently removed.

Truly vibrant red was elusive for many years: until a mysterious dye was discovered in Mexico. This is how a crushed bug became a sign of wealth and status.

The insect that painted Europe red

lthough scarlet is the colour of sin in the Old Testament, the ancient world’s elite was thirsty for red, a symbol of wealth and status. They spent fantastic sums searching for ever more vibrant hues, until Hernán Cortés and the conquistadors discovered an intoxicatingly saturated pigment in the great markets of Tenochtitlan, modern-day Mexico City. Made from the crushed-up cochineal insect, the mysterious dye launched Spain toward its eventual role as an economic

superpower and became one of the New World’s primary exports, as a red craze descended on Europe. An exhibition at Mexico City’s Palacio de Bellas Artes museum reveals the far-reaching impact of the pigment through art history, from the renaissance to modernism. In medieval and classical Europe, artisans and traders tripped over each other in search of durable saturated colors and – in turn – wealth, amid swathes of weak and watery fabrics.

Dyers guilds guarded their secrets closely and performed seemingly magical feats of alchemy to fix colours to wool, silk and cotton. They used roots and resins to create satisfactory yellows, greens and blues. The murex snail was crushed into a dye to create imperial purple cloth worth more than

its weight in gold. But truly vibrant red remained elusive. For many years, the most common red in Europe came from the Ottoman Empire, where the ‘Turkey red’ process used the root of the rubia plant. European dyers tried desperately to reproduce the results from the East, but succeeded only partially, as the Ottoman process took months and involved a pestilent mix of cow dung, rancid olive oil and bullocks’ blood, according to Amy Butler Greenfield in her book, A Perfect Red. Dyers also used Brazilwood, lac and lichens, but the resulting colours were usually underwhelming, and the processes often resulted in brownish or orange reds that faded quickly. For royalty and elite, St John’s Blood and Armenian red (dating back as far as the 8th Century BCE, according to Butler Greenfield), created the most vibrant saturated reds available in Europe until the 16th Century. But, made from different varieties of Porphyrophora root parasites, their production was laborious and availability was scarce, even at the highest prices. Mesoamerican peoples in southern Mexico had started

using the cochineal bug as early as 2000 BCE, long before the arrival of the conquistadors, according to Mexican textile expert Quetzalina Sanchez. Indigenous people in Puebla, Tlaxcala and Oaxaca had systems for breeding and engineering the cochineal bugs for ideal traits and the pigment was used to create paints for codices and murals, to dye cloth and feathers, and even as medicine.

Cochineal in the New World

hen the conquistadors arrived in Mexico City, the headquarters of the Aztec empire, the red colour was everywhere. Outlying villages paid dues to their Aztec rulers in kilos of cochineal and rolls of blood-red cloth. “Scarlet is the colour of blood and the grana from cochineal achieved that [...] the colour always had a meaning, sometimes magic other times religious,” Sanchez told the BBC.

Cortés immediately recognized the riches of Mexico, which he related in several letters to King Charles V. “I shall speak of some of the things I have seen, which although badly described, I know very well will cause such wonder that they will hardly be believed, because even we who see them here with our own eyes are unable to comprehend their reality,” wrote Cortés to the king. About the great marketplace of Tenochtitlan, which was “twice as large as that of Salamanca,” he wrote, “They also sell skeins of different kinds of spun cotton in all colours, so that it seems quite like one of the silk markets of Granada, although it is on a greater scale; also as many different colours for painters as can be found in Spain and of as excellent hues.” First-hand accounts indicate that Cortés wasn’t overly smitten with cochineal, more 31

concerned instead with plundering gold and silver. Back in Spain, the king was pressed to make ends meet and hold together his enormous dominion in relative peace, so, although he was at first unconvinced by the promise of America, he became fascinated by the exotic tales and saw in cochineal an opportunity to prop up the crown’s coffers. By 1523, cochineal pigment made its way back to Spain and caught the attention of the king who wrote to Cortés about exporting

the dyestuff back to Europe, writes Butler. “Through absurd laws and decrees [the Spanish] monopolised the grana trade,” says Sanchez. “They obligated the indians to produce as much as possible.” The native Mesoamericans who specialised in the production of the pigment and weren’t killed by disease or slaughtered during the conquest were paid pennies on the dollar – while the Spaniards “profited enormously as intermediaries.”

The incredulity of Saint Thomas, Caravaggio, 1602. Sanssouci Picture Gallery, Potsdam, Germany.

Red in art history

Illustration of José Antonio de Alzate y Ramírez, 1777. General Archive of the Nation, Mexico.

ye from the cochineal bug was ten times as potent as St John’s Blood and produced 30 times more dye per ounce than Armenian red, according to Butler. So when European dyers began to experiment with the pigment, they were delighted by its potential. Most importantly, it was the brightest and most saturated red they had ever seen. By the middle of the 16th Century it was being used across Europe, and by the 1570s it had become one of the most profitable trades in Europe – growing from a meagre “50,000 pounds of cochineal in 1557 to over 150,000 pounds in 1574,” writes Butler.

López de Arteaga’s undated work The Incredulity of Saint Thomas pales in comparison to Caravaggio’s version of the same work, where St Thomas’s consternation and amazement is palpable in the skin of his furrowed forehead. But the red smock worn by Christ in López de Arteaga’s painting, denoting his holiness, absolutely pops off the canvas. Both artists employed cochineal, the introduction of which helped to establish the dramatic contrast that characterised the baroque style. A few steps away, a portrait of Isabella Brandt (1610) by Rubens shows the versatility of paint made from cochineal. The wall behind the woman is depicted in a deep, glowing red, from

Bedroom (1888), on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago, puts a full stop on the exhibition with a single burning-hot spot of bright red. After synthetic pigments became popular, outside of Mexico, the red dye was mass-produced as industrial food colouring – its main use today. Yet while the newly independent Mexico no longer controlled the valuable monopoly on cochineal,

it also got something back – the sacred red that had been plundered and proliferated by the Spanish. “In Europe, as has happened in many cases, the history of the original people of Mexico has mattered very little,” Sanchez told the BBC, but in Mexico “the colour continues to be associated with ancestral magic [and] protects those who wear attire dyed with cochineal.”

Portrait of Isabella Brandt, Peter Paul Rubens, c1626. Uffizi Gallery, Florence.

which she emerges within a slight aura of light. The bible in her hand was also rendered in exquisite detail from cochineal red in Rubens’ unmistakable mastery of his brush, which makes his subjects feel as alive as if they were in front of you. Moving forward toward modernism – it wasn’t until the middle of the 19th Century that cochineal was replaced by synthetic alternatives as the pre-eminent red dyestuff in the world – impressionist painters continued to make use of the heavenly red hues imported from Mexico. At the Palacio de Bellas Artes, works by Paul Gauguin, Auguste Renoir and Vincent van Gogh have all been analysed and tested positive for cochineal. Like Rubens, Renoir’s subjects seem to be alive on the canvas, but as an impressionist his portraits dissolved into energetic abstractions. Gauguin also used colour, especially red, to create playful accents, but neither compared to the saturation achieved by Van Gogh. His piece, The

The bedroom, Vincent van Gogh. 1888 Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

The invention of the colour purple The rich history of the colour purple charts a surprise discovery, dye made from the mucous of sea snails, and royal restrictions on who could wear this sought after colour at the end of the spectrum.

t’s not often that a teenager mucking about in their bedroom results in a commemorative blue plaque. But that’s what happened to William Henry Perkin in 1856. Perkin was studying at the Royal College of Chemistry and was trying to find a way of making quinine in his makeshift lab at home. At the time, quinine was used to treat malaria, but it was expensive because it came from the bark of the South American cinchona tree. Perkin had been adding hydrogen and oxygen to coal tar, as you do, and this heady concoction 36

left a black residue in his glass jars. When this was made into a solution, it resulted in the first “aniline dyestuff” – as the blue plaque, on his former house in London’s Cable Street, notes. In the month he turned 18, Perkin had discovered not synthetic quinine, but synthetic purple. The mucking about in his bedroom not only made him famous, it made him rich. At first he called it Tyrian Purple – as the original, ancient colour was known. But to make it sound more fashionable, he renamed it mauve – missing a golden opportunity to call it Perkin’s Purple and perhaps bag a slot on the Farrow & Ball colour chart.

This was a big deal because, until then, purple could only be made using natural dyes and had been so expensive to make, it had become one of the most coveted colours. Because of this, purple was used to denote wealth and power. Tyrian purple was made from the mucous of sea snails – or muricidae, more commonly called murex – and an incredible amount was needed to yield just a tiny amount of dye. Mythology states that it was Hercu-

les himself who discovered it – or rather, his dog did, after picking up a murex off the beach and developing purple drool. Tyre, in what is now Lebanon, was a Phoenician city on the coastline of the Mediterranean Sea where the sea snails (still) live. Amazingly, given how many were needed to sate the appetite of emperors and kings, they didn’t become extinct. The vats used to make purple sat right on the edge of the town, because the process was a stinky one. The Roman author Pliny the Elder, not easily swayed by the fashion for purple, wondered what all the fuss was about, declaring it a “dye with an offensive smell”. Julius Caesar was particularly partial to purple. After visiting Cleopatra with her purple sails and sofas

(reputedly an early influence on DFS sofa sales) he came home with a purple toga, which he decreed only he could wear. I wonder if he knew that his toga was dyed with what was basically sea snail spittle. Many years later, when Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey, was tried for high treason against Henry VIII, part of the evidence against him was that he had been seen wearing purple: which only the king could wear. Though let’s face it, with Henry VIII, it didn’t take much. Today, purple is still regarded as a bit of an “ooh” colour. Perhaps because of its heritage, it has never been a mainstream choice, but then also because of this, it’s never lost its panache either. However, over the past 15 years, politicians have started to appropriate purple for their tie colour – Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were early adopters. Purple ties spoke to a global audience, not the left (red) or the right (blue), but everyone. But still, purple was cool. Then Ukip got hold of it. Purple has survived for centuries, has been the most legislated colour in history, has sent men to their deaths and yet still causes most people to smile when they look at it. But this may be the biggest threat purple has ever faced. 37

For centuries, the color purple has been associated with greatness: immense power, big personalities, and artistic genius.

What Art History Tells Us about Color of the Year

leopatra and Julius Caesar swathed their palaces and their bodies with it. Impressionists like Claude Monet became so obsessed with the color, they were accused by critics of contracting “violettomania.” And then, of course, pop god Prince branded his funky, supremely iconoclastic music with deep, dewy violet—a mystical force he dubbed “purple rain.” It’s these lofty qualities that color authority Pantone referenced Thursday when announcing its 2018 color of the year: Ultra violet. 38

The company lauded the hue’s ability to communicate “originality, ingenuity, and visionary thinking that points us toward the future” in a press release, noting purple’s longstanding connection to “unconventionality” and “artistic brilliance.” Indeed, nowhere is the creative and cultural influence of purple more clear than in a tour through the history of art, from ancient Roman frescoes to Pop art. It begins in the first millennium B.C., when humans developed a pigment known as purpura or Tyrian purple. Sourced from a tiny shellfish

Rothko Chapel by Mark Rothko. 1971. Houston,Texas.

called murex, it wasn’t easy to come by. More than 250,000 of the critters had to be offed in order to produce half an ounce of the color—just enough to dye a single toga. As with most rare goods, purpura became expensive and valuable. Ancient Rome’s rich and famous, in particular—led by Julius Caesar—fell for the color. Caesar’s interest was stoked after a visit to Cleopatra’s lavish Egyptian palace, decorated with purple porphyry stone and sporting couches upholstered in purple fabric. Upon his return to Rome, Caesar declared that only he could wear togas dyed completely violet. The law became harsher under a later emperor, Nero—if someone disobeyed, they could be punished by death. Subsequent emperors loosened their grip on purple, but the color maintained its association with power and luxury. The wall paintings and mosaics that decorated Roman villas of the era often employed the color to convey status. Byzantine rulers assumed a love of violet, too. A 547 A.D. mosaic cycle in the church of San Vitale in modern-day Ravenna, Italy, depicts emperor Justinian I draped head-to-toe in purple cloth; the courtiers that flank him 40

Cow, Andy Warhol, 1977. Corridor Contempoprary.

wear more modest bands of the same fabric, suggesting their high rank. (It was the Byzantines who coined the term “born in the purple.”) The Catholic church later adopted the color, and violet-robed priests began to crop up in painted portraits. The 18th-century French court followed suit: When Antoine-François Callet painted King Louis XVI in 1779, he depicted him in a deep plum coronation robe.

Purple became more accessible after teenage chemist William Henry Perkin accidently discovered a synthetic recipe for the pigment in 1856. He’d begun experimenting with coal tar to combat malaria when he noticed a pretty residue lining his instruments. Perkin called it mauve, and the shade quickly became the century’s “it” color for clothing, furniture, and even dog collars. One En-

glish journal, Punch, dubbed the craze for this new purple “Mauve Measles.” Some of the era’s most revolutionary painters proceeded to catch the purple bug, too. Monet, in particular, championed the color in his Impressionist canvases. During the late 1800s and early 1900s, his practice was rooted in an in-depth study of the effects of light and shadow on color. He believed that violet was able to harness the dimensionality of shadow better than black and used the color with abandon. “I have finally discovered the true color of the atmosphere,” he once noted. “It is violet. Fresh air is violet.” His enthusiasm rubbed off on his Impressionist peers, and soon the group’s penchant for the hue was being described as “violettomania,” a purported symptom of hysteria. Supporters of the Impressionists, however, believed they had “an acute perceptual facility that allowed them to see ultraviolet light at the extreme edge of the spectrum, invisible to others’ eyes,” as Stella Paul explains in her book Chromophilia: The Story of Color in Art. Other radical 20th-century artists used purple to

Waterloo Bridge, Blurred sun, Claude Monet, 1903 ARoS Aarhus Museum of Art, Aarhus, Denmark.

varying effects. Georgia O’Keeffe selected various shades of violet to create the deep folds of a flower in her 1926 painting Black Iris. Similar to the Impressionists, she didn’t seek to depict reality. Rather, she used color and form to convey more intangible forces—here, warmth, sensuality, and vigor. 20th-century British badboy painter Francis Bacon used purple liberally across various paintings of wailing and contorted bodies. In particular, he accented a series of screaming

popes in violet.In Study after Velazquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1953), he covers his subject’s amethyst robes in aggressive markings, as if undermining the authority purple conveyed in the Catholic church. Abstract Expressionist painter Mark Rothko also played with the color’s religious associations when he filled his magnum opus, the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas, with maroon, plum, and deep mauve canvases. Unlike Bacon’s figurative approach, however, Rothko

focused on the soothing, meditative power of the violet spectrum. During the same era, James Turrell began experimenting with his ethereal, immersive Light and Spaceenvironments. Some he lit monochromatically with deep, diffused fuschia; the experience of entering these spaces has similarly been described as religious. Perhaps the most literal connection between art history and Pantone’s choice of ultra violet, however, comes with the advent of Pop art in the 1960s.

Certainly, Andy Warhol’s screen-printed canvases sported the neon hue. But his friend and Factory superstar Isabelle Collin Dufresne literally became the shade. By 1967, she’d changed her name to Ultra Violet and wore purple hair, purple eyeshadow, and purple lipstick wherever she went. She joined a long line of creatives who not only harnessed the shape-shifting meaning of purple—from luxurious to radical to transcendent—but also added their own twist to the seductive hue. 41

Throughout history, artists have used colours to evoke certain emotions or to emphasize a number of view-points and concerns.

The History of The Colour Green in a Nutshell

he colour green is typically associated with Nature. Presently, as the concern about our environment is growing, the colour green seems to be everywhere, not only as the latest fashion trend, but as a strong symbol of serenity and new beginning. As such, the colour green has been voted the colour of the year 2017 by Pantone. The particular shade of Greenery, a fresh and zesty yellow-green shade, is seen to present 2017 as the colour, which best reflects what is taking place in our global culture. Each year, the Pantone association searches for the shade which reflects the moods and attitudes of our planet. Defined as the shade which signals the immersion with the physical world, Greenery shade,

a tone of green colour, is a symbol of restoration and renewal. Seen as a dominant design choice, the shade is already used in urban planning, architecture and lifestyle. This green hue helps to illustrate the primary association most have with the colour green pigments, that of nature, serenity and freshness. Yet, does the art history display only the positive attribution of the green colour, or are there deadly secrets the colour green hides?

The Symbolic Meaning of the Colour Green

ince the beginning of time, artists, shamans and leaders used the earth pigments to produce various shades. As early as 40,000 years ago, the first pigments, a combination of soil, animal fat, burnt charcoal and chalk created a basic palette of five colours, red, yellow, black, and white. Since then, the history of colour, such as the tale of the blue art pigment, reflects the history and the major discoveries of the world. For some, the trail of the blue pigment takes us into the representation of the entirely new world which forever remains out of reach, and enters the world of magic, and visionary art. As much as the blue colour is typically associated with the most spiritual, mysterious, and philosophical topics, the colour green for various cultures is also the shade illustrating the divine and religious figures.

In the Muslim world, the colour green is strongly related to the Prophet Muhammad; in England the colour has heroic meanings and it is connected to the stories of Robin Hood; in China, the colour represents disgrace, while in Japan green signifies eternal life. The green, considered as one of the most pleasing colours of the colour wheel, also creates an atmosphere of serenity and calmness. Because of this, many architects and designers implement it in their projects, especially in interior designs of hospitals, for example.

The Other Side of the Colour Green

urprisingly, behind the veil of the peaceful symbolism and meaning, the history of the colour green reveals a deadly fact. No other pigment in the history of art was considered as most poisonous. Connected to the death of Napoleon Bonaparte, prior to being banned, the colour green decorated not only the walls, the household objects but some of the most innovative landscape paintings. Producing the deadly hue, named Scheeleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Green, the Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele introduced. 45

the colour to the art world in 1775. Soon, it took over the Victorian age, regardless of the fact that it was suspected by many to be dangerous for artists and patrons alike. The fact that this particular hue was used for the colouring of Bonaparte’s bedroom wallpaper forces many historians to believe that Scheele’s Green caused the revolutionary’s death in 1821. This particular hue connected the colour green pigments and the toxic chemical arsenic. The deadly combination was replaced in the 19th-century with the mixture of copper and arsenic, which produced a more durable alternative of the colour green shade. Many Impressionist artists, adoring the exploration of nature, used the new shade, named Paris Green in their production of fascinating landscape paintings. This particular shade, also toxic, for many is considered responsible for Paul Cezanne’s diabetes, and Claude Monet’s blindness. Not surprisingly, in the 1960’s the colour was banned. 46

Illustration of Scheele’s Green by Lily Nishita

The Green Colour as a Lifestyle

n the 19th-century, the colour green supported the quest of many artists for the

new aesthetic language. As a certain circle of the art’s society concerned itself with issues of beauty and sensuality, the colour green entered homes of many English aristocrats.

This colour, as it reflected the natural world, was frequently used during the Art Nouveau period as well. Since nature was considered as a primary source of inspiration, green is found in most pattern designs, illustrations and decorations of both the walls and household objects of this time. During the Impressionism movement, the birth of en plein air technique, which defined the genesis of impressionism landscape, inspired artists to truly turn to nature. Yet, with the birth of the symbolism and Fauvism movement, the understanding of colours changed and artists concerned themselves more to the presentation of their own impressions of the world. Closely associated with nature, the colour is also a symbol of certain lifestyles, and often a slogan for many organizations fighting for the preservation of our planet. Yet, above anything else, the story of this pigment, displays an interesting fact of the human nature, that for beauty in art many are willing to die.

Vividly coloured wallpaper was the height of fashion for aspirational Victorians â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and the cause of countless deaths Illustration by Rachel Vermeer

A killer colour... Could this wallpaper kill you? 47

19th century wallpaper by William Morris

n Thursday, April 3 1862, Dr Thomas Orton was summoned to Limehouse, east London. The patient was a gravely ill three-year-old named Ann Amelia Turner and her parents were desperate: over the previous six weeks, Richard Turner, a bricklayer, and his wife had lost all three of their other children to a mysterious illness, and they feared Ann Amelia would be next. When the first of their children had fallen ill in the February, the local surgeon had diagnosed diphtheria, a contagious disease all too common in 19th-century London. Within a few days, a second child was dead, closely followed by a third: again, in both cases, diphtheria was

blamed. When Ann Amelia started to display the same symptoms as her siblings, someone summoned Dr Orton, one of Victorian London’s most senior physicians. According to his own notes, on arrival at the Turner house Orton had found Ann Amelia “suffering from extreme prostration”, racked with pain and unable to swallow – symptoms consistent with diphtheria. Yet, despite increasing panic among their neighbours, living cheek-by-jowl in a typical East End terrace, none of them had contracted the disease. Nor had the other Turner children responded to traditional diphteria treatments. This just didn’t make sense: Orton felt increasingly certain that the

original diagnosis was wrong. Before he left Limehouse, he did what he could to make Ann Amelia comfortable, and began making notes about the family’s living conditions. These, he would later refer to in court. He noted that the Turners’ home was cramped but clean and otherwise in “capital condition, well drained and ventilated”. He examined the neighbourhood’s sanitation and water supply but found nothing he considered injurious to health. The one feature of the house that gave him cause for alarm was the green wallpaper in the Turners’ bedroom. For Orton, it brought to mind an unsettling theory that had been doing the rounds in certain medical circles for years: that wallpaper could kill.

“The vivid green used in Victorian wallpaper was derived from toxic copper arsenite”

Photography of Paris Green Poison. Private Collection of Madame Talbot.

Within a month, Ann Amelia was dead. Orton applied at once for permission to perform a post mortem. Days later, Dr Letheby, a renowned chemist at the London Hospital, tested tissue samples from the girl and confirmed a new likely cause of death, arsenical poisoning. The panic over diphtheria gave way to another as newspapers rushed to publicise Letheby’s theory: that paints made from arsenic and used to colour wallpaper had killed the Limehouse children. At the inquest, Letheby caused a sensation by claiming it was not even necessary to sleep in the same room as arsenic-coloured wallpaper in order to be poisoned by it: “I have known two children die from arsenical poison imbibed while playing for a few hours daily

in their father’s library,” he said. Yet despite the evidence, and the judge’s condemnation of the use of green wallpaper as “objectionable”, the jury returned a verdict of “natural death”. The coroner was astounded. “I cannot refrain from expressing my entire dissent from the verdict,” he said. Even the court reporters were livid; one journalist nicknamed the jurors “The Perverse Jury”. Yet those 12 men were not the only sceptics. Outraged letters appeared in the press arguing that it was impossible for anyone to be killed by wallpaper. One, printed in the East London Observer on May 17, 1862, drew an angry response from Orton himself, who had by then joined a growing medical campaign against the scourge of arsenical wallpapers: “The mother declared that her children had always been healthy up to Christmas last; that ‘she had never had a doctor in the house’… till the children had measles followed by diphtheria, in January,” he wrote, before noting that new wallpaper had been hung that Christmas and that only a short time afterwards “the father, mother and all the children began to sicken…”. He went on to list some of his other cases: “I have known a family of children sickening for a while; they have been sent into the

country and got well. They have been brought home again, and again taken ill. The paper has been removed, and the sickness has ceased. A few days ago, in my own neighbourhood, a person, in cleaning her house, gently brushed over the green paper on the walls. In an hour or two she and her husband were seized with pains in the eyes and head, irritation about the upper lip and nostrils, and a sense of suffocation, so that they could not sleep all night. With these warnings, the matter now rests with the public.” The origins of arsenic in wallpaper can be traced back to 1778 when the Swedish chemist Carl Scheele first used copper arsenite to create a vivid green pigment. The richness of the colour and its superb pigmentation properties made Scheele’s Green (as it came to be known) highly sought after by paint manufacturers and interior decorators. Brilliantly vivid shades of green were particularly popular among artists and designers of the Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic movements (Christopher Dresser, Walter Crane, and E W Godwin among them) and, in turn, green be-

came a very fashionable colour in which to decorate the home or to dress oneself. Although not all commercially available green paints contained arsenic, many did, including Emerald Green, Paris Green and Schweinfurt Green, as well as the original Scheele’s Green. Before the craze for these colours had even reached Britain, the dangers associated with arsenical paints had been acknowledged in Europe, but these findings were largely ignored by British manufacturers. Wallpaper companies found their businesses thriving and they were reluctant to step away from the brilliant colours that could be achieved using arsenic (scientific research carried out by the National Archives has since proved that, contrary to the popular belief of the time, it wasn’t only the green colourings that contained the poison). Wallpaper bedecked every fashionable home – even to the point of several different, clashing patterns being used in the same room or even on the same wall. Although the very first arsenic-free wallpaper in Britain was produced in 1859 by William Woollams & Co, it was not until the 1870s 50

“The Arsenic Waltz.” John Leech, 1862. Wellcome Library, London.

that Morris & Co, perhaps the most famous wallpaper company, finally bent to increasing public pressure and began producing their own arsenic-free paper. Even then William Morris, the company’s founder, remained privately unconvinced of the case against arsenic. In 1885 – years after he had stopped using arsenical colours in his designs – he wrote to his friend Thomas Wardle: “As to the arsenic scare a greater folly it is hardly possible to imagine: the doctors were bitten as people were bitten by the witch fever,” he said. “My belief about it all is that doctors find their patients ailing, don’t know

what’s the matter with them, and in despair put it down to the wall papers when they probably ought to put it down to the water closet, which I believe to be the source of all illness.” A tin of the toxic green paint made popular by artists such as Sandys. In the years since, Morris has been criticised for remaining in denial about the risks for so long, not least because his family’s wealth came from copper mining, a source of arsenic. But there may be a more sympathetic explanation for why he failed to make the connection: Morris had not only been working with arsenical paints for years, he

even had arsenical wallpapers in his own home, as did his friend and business partner Edward Burne-Jones, and yet neither man’s family had ever suffered ill effects. Many doctors were also sceptical, having frequently treated patients whose family members remained healthy, even though they shared the same wallpapered rooms as the sick. It was not yet recognised widely that an identical exposure to arsenic in any given group might not have the same effect on each person in the group. As studies would later show, an identical level of arsenic poisoning can prove fatal to children, the infirm or the elderly, yet have barely any effect on a healthy adult. Studies would also show that those with a higher level of protein in their diet were able to cope with a higher level of arsenic in their system. If the idea of even coming into contact with arsenic in the home sounds shocking today, in Victorian Britain it could still be found everywhere. Fashionable women chose green dresses and wore artificial wreathes in their hair; trendy men wore green-waistcoats and cravats. All were coloured with arsenical dyes. The cartoonist

“The Great Lozenge-Maker,” John Leech, 1858.

John Leech lampooned this fashion in 1862, with his cartoon for Punch magazine, “The Arsenic Waltz”, in which he depicted a male and female skeleton in evening dress, poisoned by their own clothes. Victorians ate vegetables sprayed with arsenic insecticides and meat from animals dipped in arsenic as a fly deterrent. Panic broke out across the nation in 1879, when it was discovered that lickable postage stamps were also coloured with arsenical dyes, but this was nothing compared to the hysteria that erupted at the beginning of the 20th century with the arrival of a whole new scandal: arsenic in beer. Finally, in 1903, a Royal Commission recommended safe levels of arsenic for food and drink but, remarkably, no legislation has ever been passed in Britain prohibiting the use of arsenic to colour wallpaper. Nevertheless, if laws change slowly, fashion moves fast and the ever wider coverage of poisonings led to a shift in public attitudes towards green wallpapers and clothing: arsenical paints simply fell out of favour. Today, it would be highly unlikely for arsenic-coloured wallpapers to have survived in any British home; at every historic house I have visited, curators have assured me their walls are completely free of arsenic. In the absence of government intervention, the people of Britain used the power of their pocketbooks to make arsenic in wallpapers obsolete and, as a result, rid their homes of one of history’s most unlikely killers. 51

A Brief History of the Colour Pink

ink has always been a spectacular contradiction. It’s simultaneously fresh-faced and sophisticated, alien (a 17th-century Chinese word for pink meant “foreign color”) and internal (from our mouths to musculature), and at home in both high and low culture. In Japan, it serves as wistful symbol of the slain samurai; in Korea, it’s interpreted as a sign of trustworthiness. In the West, pink has shifted from one extreme to the next over the last three centuries. Eighteenth-century fashion helped to popularize the shade, which was a favorite of the pastel-loving European bourgeoisie. Pink received a fuchsia facelift during the 1960s Pop Art movement 54

and a neon-soaked ’90s revival, before settling down as the pale, “post-gender” center of every millennial moodboard. From Renaissance portraits to rose gold iPhones, here’s a brief history of pink in art— and beyond.

A difficult shade to pin down

ink rarely appears in nature, which may explain why the color only entered the English language as a noun at the end of the 17th century. But in other languages, the shade remains difficult to pin down. “In Japan, at least seven different terms are used for pink shades,” says Bauhaus-Universität Weimar

The Courtesan Hanazome of the Ogiya reading a letter angrinding ink, Kikukawa Eizan, ca. 1810-1815. San Diego Museum of Art, California, USA.

fine art professor Barbara Nemitz, co-author of Pink: The Exposed Color in Contemporary Art and Culture (2006). Pink’s cultural significance can also vary widely between countries. In contemporary Japanese culture, says Nemitz, pink is perceived as a masculine and mournful color that represents “young warriors who fall in battle while in the full bloom of life.” In Germany, pink is “rosa” a hue that’s “bright, soft, peaceful, sweet, and harmless,” she explains. In 2004, Nemitz conducted a workshop in which she asked students from Tokyo to select a shade they felt encompassed the color “pink.” The swatches proved entirely different across cultures, with the Japanese participants favoring the cooler shades to the European penchant for warmer tones. An ongoing exhibition at the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA), “Pink Art,” serves to further highlight this subjectivity. Though anchored in the primary color red, pink isn’t part of the electromagnetic spectrum. “When we see pink, we’re not seeing actual wavelengths of pink light,” explains Christina Olsen, the outgoing director of the WCMA and curator of its

current exhibition. “It’s an extra-spectral color, which means other colors must be mixed to generate it.” The diversity of pink hues is the result of adding or subtracting yellow and blue tones from a wide spectrum of colors. So, even a computer can have a hard time identifying the shade. The works featured in “Pink Art” were selected by an algorithm that identified “pink” works from the museum’s collection. Surprising Olsen, the computer rejected Richard Hawkins’ Special Appearance (2004), “a painting suffused with pink by my eyes,” she says. “The reality is, computer-based practices of curating turn out to be as distinctly subjective as human-based ones.”

A brief art history of pink

t wasn’t until the Renaissance that artists began to explicitly discuss pink as part of their palette. Italian painter Cennino Cennini described the shade as a blend between Venetian Red and St. John’s White, using it to provide the glowing undertones of religious figures and poised gentry alike. It wasn’t until the 1700s,

The swing, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, ca. 1767 Collection Walace, London.

however, that the color was popularized through the fashion and interior design worlds. Pastel pink was favored by both the men and women of the European bourgeoisie, from the Georgian gowns of Mary, Countess of Howe, to the embroidered silk coats sported by the well-heeled men of Louis XVI’s court. Praised by proto-psychologists of the late 18th century, pink was recommended as

the bedroom color of choice for the business-minded gentleman for a restorative and uplifting home base. The lush raucousness of the 18th-century Rococo movement was the perfect setting for pink’s rise to fame in the Western art-historical canon: sun-dappled dresses, enchanted forests, and saucy lovers’ whispers characterize the indulgent oil paintings of Jean-Honoré Fragonard 55

from the 1770s. Over the next century, the color blossomed in popularity. Under the umbrella of Japonisme, the 19th-century term for the influence of Japanese aesthetics and culture in the West, pink imbued the French Impressionist and Neo Impressionist movement. From the sublime golden hours of Théo van Rysselberghe to Claude Monet’s lilies and Edgar Degas’s dancers, European pinks turned bold shades of musky rose, bright strawberry, and tropical cerise. In the 20th century, pink’s cultural significance underwent a series of rapid overhauls. Its dramatic and exotic disposition was a perfect fit for one of the first modern movements, Fauvism. Post-World War I, pink slipped off the radar, hardly appearing in the male-dominated worlds of Surrealism, Dada, and Abstract Expressionism. By the 1960s, pink was flourishing again within the Pop Art movement. It found the perfect bedfellow in the movement’s melding of high art and mainstream culture, from Andy Warhol’s Marilyns to David Hockney’s bathers. It even tickled the palate of the more flashy minimalists, particularly the light art king Dan Flavin. 56

The Pink Dancers, Before the Ballet, Edgar Degas, 1884. Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, Denmark

Then came the rise of digital aesthetics in the 1990s. “We discovered the mysteries of this former taboo color, its capacity to move us and frighten us,” says Nemitz. “It is thus a driving force in contemporary art.”

Marilyn 31, Andy Warhol, 1967. Artlala Studio Gallery

The politics of pink

ink has now become emancipated from the color of harmlessness, cuteness, sweetness, innocence, and the oppressed,” suggests Nemitz. “It has gained an active and powerful role.” She cites the color’s recent appearance in a number of activist demonstrations, from the pink-colored pussyhats of anti-Trump marches in the U.S. to the Gulabi Gang in India. Yet pink has been equally at home lining the shelves. In 2005, the Korean photographer JeongMee Yoon documented her daughter surrounded by a sea of pink-

hued purchases. She’s nearly swallowed whole by girly, plastic-y excess—a critique of the concentrated post-World War I effort to re-package pink as feminine, led by media giants and department superstores such as Time, Best & Co., Marshall Field, and Halle’s. “How often do you see pink in architecture or machinery?” asks photographer and performance artist Signe Pierce. “How often is pink presented outside of a gendered perspective?” Her digitally manipulated photography saturates everyday scenes with a spectrum of pink, in response the color’s hyper-feminization beginning in the ’90s. “The insistence upon socializing women to identify with a color that doesn’t exist in the ‘real world’ is, to me, a testament towards the patriarchal hierarchies that work to keep women submissive in everyday life,” Pierce says.

Is this pastel’s second stand?

n 2007, the avant-garde Swedish fashion label Acne Studios debuted its salmon-hued shopping bags; sensing a movement, Apple rolled out its first Rose Gold

Pink out of a corner (to Jasper Johns), Dan Flavin, 1963. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA.

iPhone in late 2015. The same year, Drake and Pantone went head-to-head with “Hotline Bling” and “Rose Quartz,” which went on to top the charts in tunes and tones. As with Rococo, today’s so-called “millennial pink” positions itself as a gender neutral color. But is it succeeding? On one hand, millennial pink’s ubiquity reflects a growing rejection of the shade as a “secondary color for a second sex,” says Pierce. It speaks to a more emotionally connected and open culture, Nemitz notes, by “encouraging us to show ourselves as soft, sensitive and vulnerable.” It also trends towards the sublime, she continues: “Millennial pink is not worn out and dirty. The hue is unapproachable. It distances itself from everyday life.” Yet millennials still cycle through a seemingly endless assortment of pale pink products, from coconut water to designer streetwear. Will this consumerism eventually consume pink? “I hope that in being dubbed ‘millennial,’ Piece says, “its usage will transcend a fleeting moment or trend and embrace its infinite place in time and space.” 57

Artist Anish Kapoor has got his hands on the "world's pinkest pink", which he is legally forbidden from using.

Anish Kapoor and the

world's

" pinkest pink"

ritish artist Stuart Semple created the fluorescent pink paint pigment earlier this year, in retaliation to "rotter" Kapoor buying the exclusive rights to the Vantablack pigment, said to be the blackest shade of black ever created. The cerise pink shade is available to all artists except Kapoor, who is legally banned from purchasing it. It is sold in 50-gram pots on Semple's website for no profit, with a price label of £3.99. But customers must confirm that the "paint will not make its way into that hands of Anish Kapoor". They are obliged to agree to a legal declaration that 58

states: "You are not Anish Kapoor, you are in no way affiliated to Anish Kapoor, you are not purchasing this item on behalf of Anish Kapoor or an associate of Anish Kapoor." But despite the ban, the Indian-born British artist – the highest ranking figure on the Dezeen Artists Hot List – has got his hands on Semple's Pink shade – a reflective powdered pigment that repels light to effect a powerful fluorescence. Kapoor posted a picture of his middle finger dipped in the paint to his dirty_corner Instagram account with the caption "Up yours #pink". Upset by Kapoor's actions,

Semple put out a call to find out how he stole the colour. He claims it was a "very shoddy inside job". "I was really sad and disappointed that he felt so left out that he needed to orchestrate some conspiracy to steal our pink," he told Dezeen. Semple also said he is determined that Kapoor should be punished for his actions, or at least apologise. "We'll be dobbing him in, he will be told off and hopefully that will teach him to share his colours in future," said Semple. "It would be nice if he

owned up, said sorry and gave me my Pink back." Semple's "pinkest pink" is a reflective powdered pigment that repels light to effect a powerful fluorescence. Instagram commenters were also disappointed in Kapoor, describing his response as "petty". They have resurfaced #sharetheblack – a protest hashtag against Kapoor's monopoly of the black shade. Not admitting defeat by Kapoor, Semple has also created the "world's most glittery glitter", "the "world's greenest green" and the "world's yellowest yellow" and is urging purchasers to "refrain from sharing any with him or his associates". The paints are all completely sold out on Semple's Culture Hustle online shop. Semple posted a video mocking Kapoor on his own Instagram page last night, which records himself writing "I will be good... I will share my colours" 100 times in white chalk on a blackboard. The artist has also created the "world's most glittery glitter", which he has also banned Kapoor

from using Kapoor's Vantablack is currently the blackest substance known – so dark that it absorbs 99.96 per cent of light. Made up of a series of microscopic vertical tubes, when light strikes the pigment it becomes trapped instead of bouncing off, and is continually deflected between the tubes. It was developed by British company NanoSystems for military purposes and astronomy equipment, but the company allowed Kapoor to be the only artist able to use it. Semple's products are intended as a retaliation to Kapoor buying the exclusive rights to the Vantablack pigment, said to be the blackest shade of black ever created The news sparked outrage among other artists, including English painter Christian Furr – who told the Mail on Sunday that he felt Kapoor was "monopolising the material". "I've never heard of an artist monopolising a material. Using pure black in an artwork grounds it," he said. "All the best artists have had a thing for pure black – Turner, Manet, Goya. This black is like dynamite in the art world." "We should be able to use it – it isn't right that it belongs to one man," he added. 59

Why black is such a positive colour It has been associated with death and negativity throughout history. But without black, you wouldn’t be reading this, fashion would lose its power to flatter – and there’s only one cat that’s lucky, isn’t there?

s black a colour? No, say scientists. In the visible spectrum, white reflects light and so is actually a presence of all colours. But black absorbs it, sucks it all in. True black is the absence of colour. Black is what happens when no light at all reaches your eye. Except, of course, that we almost never see pure black. Unless you happen to have the misfortune to be gazing into a black hole, everything you perceive as black has some light, however small, bouncing back at you. Throughout history, for many cultures and societies, black 62

and white have stood as opposites: white the positive, pure light, black its negative counterpart. From the Greeks, who sat the god of the underworld, Hades, on a black ebony throne to the Romans – death, in Roman poetry, was the hora nigra, or the black hour – black was not a friendly colour. The association with death, with symbolic as well as literal darkness, with funerals and the afterlife is a common theme throughout history, from Nordic legends to European paintings, where the devil was often painted in deep black.

Yet without the pigment black, where would we be? Not reading this, for a start – aren’t you reading this in black text on a white background? So instead of trawling through the negatives, let us revel in the absence of light – from cultures that celebrated it, to practical uses, to the future. Let us go back to black.

The source of life

ost ancient cultures associated black with death. But while for the Greeks and Romans it was symbolically laden with all the worst things, for the ancient Egyptians this proved a more positive link. Black was the colour of the rich, alluvial soil watered by the Nile river that provided fertility and growth – the source of life itself. And while it was also the colour of Anubis, the god of mummification and of the afterlife, he was not a negative figure or evil presence, but actually one who protected the dead against evil. So black was the colour of death, but also the colour of resurrection. Indeed, as the “inventor” of embalming, Anubis was worshipped – after all, by embalming, people were preserved that they might one day live again.

and other substances was used. But whatever it’s original source, without it, would anything be so legible? It is the extreme contrast between black ink and white paper – or black font and white screen – that makes it clearest to read. And when a new, easily whipped-up version of ink was created in the 15th century, it suddenly became possible to print things on a bigger scale – books, prints and engravings proliferated – and with them, ideas and thoughts could spread freely. From the Protestant reformation to propaganda pamphlets, print democratised ideas and gave them wings.

A nice silhouette

lack, surely, is the most flattering colour. Blue jeans might be iconic but black ones are so much more slimming – there is a reason why Chanel’s little black dresses have proved so popular since the 1920s. It’s also practical, rarely fades in modern fabrics and goes with everything – in fashion, black is not a negative but a neutral.

Inky fingers Black ink was invented in both Ancient China and India. In China, an inventor named Tien-Lcheu mixed soot from pinewood and lamp oils to create a dark pigment. In India, ink from burned bones, tar

Anubis Shrine, discovered in 1922 Egyptian Museum, Cairo

In fact, it was the colour of choice for the chic and rich as far back as the 14th century, where rulers and courts began to wear the austere but elegant shade. It began – don’t so many trends? – in Italy, where the Duke of Milan, the Count of Savoy and other rulers began to don it. This quickly spread to France and then England, where under Richard II the whole court adopted the colour. It was, for rulers, a colour of power and dignity. I have no need of showy shades, says regal black – I have all the power I need here in my person.

Black cats

veryone knows that a black cat crossing your path is lucky. Everyone in the UK and Japan, anyway. Black was the top choice for a ship’s cat and some fishermen’s wives also kept black cats at home, for added luck. But why? After all, according to the Cat Fanciers’ Association (CFA) there are 22 cat breeds that can come with solid black coats so can they be that rare, and therefore special? It’s a link back to ancient Egypt again – specifically to the cat goddess Bast. Eygptian households kept black cats in their households and looked after them in the hope of currying favour with the powerful goddess. In the rest of Europe, though, they can’t get past the suspicion that those felines are hanging out with witches, and therefore up to no good. Though in Germany, there is an oddly specific superstition that a black cat crossing someone’s path from right to left is 63

bad, whereas left to right is good. Presumably it’s cheating if you dash across the road to reverse your perspective. Pity the poor black cats of the US – it has been found that black cats have a lower chance of adoption compared with moggies of another hue – and, in fact, black animals in general take longer on average to rehome. Let’s hope they do well on 17 August 17 – “Black Cat Appreciation Day”.

Black to the future

n 2014, a British company, Surrey NanoSystems, produced a material so black that it can barely be seen. This new material, named VantaBlack, absorbs all but 0.035% of visual light – a new world record for black. It is made of carbon nanontubes, each 10,000 times thinner than a human hair. It is so dark, that it is impossible for the human eye to work out what it is actually seeing and shapes or folds in this material simply seem to disappear. The scientific applications are numerous – but perhaps on a more sinister note, so are the military applications. On that, the company have been silent. Presumably, it’s gone to work on some Black Ops. Le Chat Noir, poster by Théophile Steinlen’s, 1896. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Artist defends controversial deal with developers of Vantablack, the blackest material â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;after a black holeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;

'You could disappear into it' The blackest black Monochrome (Black / Cobalt Blue), Anish Kapoor, 2015 Galleria Continua

Sculpture made with Vantablack S-VIS by Anish Kapoor

n Seoul for the opening of his Gathering Clouds exhibition at the Kukje Gallery, the British artist Anish Kapoor is discussing his controversial deal with developers of Vantablack: the “blackest black” pigment of paint, a colour Kapoor now owns exclusive rights to use. After reading a newspaper story about the discovery of the pigment – which “we think is the blackest material in the universe, after a black hole”, Kapoor says – the excited artist contacted the British manufacturers, NanoSystem, and offered to collaborate with them. The pigment is comprised of microscopic stems of colour that are 300 times as tall as they are wide, so that about 66

99.6% of all light “just gets trapped in the network of standing segments”, he explains. “It’s literally as if you could disappear into it.” The pigment was being developed for scientific and military use due to its “masking ability” – it has the potential to hide stealth aircrafts and block out all light from entering “super powerful” telescopes, enabling them to see the faintest stars. Kapoor, who immediately recognised its artistic potential, has been working with the pigment since 2014 but says it’s proving difficult to make sufficient quantities to apply to any artworks, because of its density.

“They were only able to make bits that are 2cm square [at a time] and what we are trying to do at the moment is try and make a certain bulk of it,” Kapoor says. “[Vantablack] is very technical. It needs like a furnace – pressure and heat – before this material can do what it does, [which is] become super black,” he says. “It’s necessarily a collaboration between them and me. I say, ‘C’mon guys – we can make it bigger and we can make it applicable in others ways.’” The artist was attracted to the pigment not only because he felt strong emotion when he saw it (the closest experience, he said, would be staring into

a black hole) but because he had long been interested in working with “void forms”, and the pigment would be entirely non-reflective. But when Kapoor won exclusive rights to the material in February, it came with backlash from the artistic community. “I’ve never heard of an artist monopolising a material,” the artist Christian Furr told the Daily Mail. “All the best artists have had a thing for pure black – Turner, Manet, Goya … This black is like dynamite in the art world. We should be able to use it. It isn’t right that it belongs to one man.” Kapoor defended his exclusive use of the material: “Why exclusive? Because it’s a collaboration, because I am wanting to push them to a certain use for it. I’ve collaborated with people who make things out of stainless steel for years and that’s exclusive.” He believes much of the debate comes down to emotion. “The problem is that colour is so emotive – especially black ... I don’t think the same response would occur if it was white.” Kapoor, who has had two decades of psychotherapy, said it’s the “psycho side” of black that makes us want to possess it. “Perhaps the darkest

The blackest unicorn in Black 2.0 by Stuart Semple.

black is the black we carry within ourselves,” he says. “It’s not the night where you switch the lights off – it’s the night where you close your eyes. There’s a psycho side to blackness that we don’t associate with other colours readily. I suspect red does the same. I’ve worked with red a great deal, for not dissimilar reasons.” Kapoor’s fascination for the non-reflective pigment

is particularly interesting in light of the centrepiece of his new exhibition at Seoul’s Kukje Gallery. Made from reflective stainless steel, the sculptures are twisted to 90 degrees, distorting the viewer’s reflection when they walk around the work. It is disorienting, almost an anti-selfie work of art, in contrast to the Instagram-friendly installations that seem to be taking over

major spaces; it’s tempting to take a picture but your reflection is twisted and deformed. “I have been trying out these forms for a number of years,” Kapoor says of his Non Objects series, to which these new sculptures belong. Fabricated from mirrored forms and concave objects, the sculptures investigate the “in-between state” of objects whose internal makeup is at odds with their surface. 67

“In a way they are technological but they are also a very, very simple idea. I have been deeply interested over a long period of time in geometry. I’m interested in taking certain forms, triangles, squares and turning them into something else ... It’s a stupid, simple idea but it does something – it becomes something else.” Kapoor is still bemused by another controversy that recently dogged him. Last year in France, his Versailles Garden public art show, Dirty Corner, was dubbed “The Queen’s Vagina” – and landed him in court. “That became hugely controver-

sial, I still don’t know why,” he says. “It seemed to offend people for reasons I can’t understand.” The work was defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti, which Kapoor refused to remove to make a statement on “humanity’s intolerance” – a decision that saw him sued by a Versailles politician. The sculpture (and graffiti) was later covered in gold leaf. “It’s interesting that the work got sexualised,” Kapoor says. “Our cities are full of masculine objects. No one makes the slightest noise about another phallus on the horizon but it seems a vagina is

really a problem.” Kapoor says the response to the work says more about the people than his own artistic intentions. “All I ever did in an interview was use the word ‘she’ – I didn’t use the word ‘vagina’. I said, ‘She sits here in on the lawn’,” he says. “It’s interesting [that], when it got named as a feminine sexual object, all the hate came out – real hate. So I decided to leave it there. “You can’t make art for other people. You can’t make art for an audience – the work has to live the story of itself in a way.”

Detail of Sculpture made with Vantablack S-VIS by Anish Kapoor

This new pigment was developed by Semple in response to kapoor by the monopolization of vantablack.

Life and death united in the mother of all colours White, colour or no colour, the colour of purity, the divine and life itself. But depending on where you are in the world, also the colour of death, sickness and destruction.

or millions of years natural white pigments have been found all over the world in various forms, and for many centuries now various synthetic variants have been developed. Some have already been used for thousands of years, whilst others have disappeared from artistsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; paints for all sorts of reasons. A short journey through the sometimes dark history of the colour white.

Natural white

etween approximately 145 and 66 million years ago, a geological period known as the Cretaceous, large areas of the world as we now know it were covered by vast seas. Once dead, the marine animals sank to the bottom, where eventually nothing remained of them except their calcareous

skeletons and shells. Over the years these formed thick layers, sometimes dozens of metres thick, which were crushed under the sediments of the sand and clay deposited by rivers. When later the sea level dropped and the Earth's crust was pushed upwards, these white layers reached the surface. They consist mainly of calcium carbonate, a form of calcite better known to us as chalk, the oldest white

pigment on earth. The Dutch name for chalk ‘krijt’ and its French equivalent ‘crétacé’ reveal the origins of their names, the chalk cliffs of the island of Crete. Apart from chalk (calcite) other white mineral pigments occur naturally. Examples include kaolin, also known as china clay or pipe clay, and gypsum. These whites have been used ever since man first started painting. Chalk can be found, for example, in the oldest cave paintings, and primitive tribes even today paint their bodies with paints, including white, according to age-old rituals.

as early as four centuries before the Common Era. Consequently it is probably the oldest synthetically produced pigment. By exposing the metal to the vapour of an acid fluid such as vinegar, a chemical reaction is brought about that converts the lead into an alkaline lead carbonate that covers the lead as a white deposit. This white deposit was scraped off to yield a white powder, which produced a fantastic paint with a good opacity even when mixed with oil.

From natural white to

synthetic white

atural, mineral pigments have the disadvantage of becoming more transparent as more binding agent is used to make the paint more workable. As the paint decreases in opacity the colour becomes less white. When combined with oil they lose practically all of their opacity and become dull in colour. With the discovery of new white pigments, the mineral whites were subsequently used increasingly less for making paint white. They are, however, still being used today as fillers for various applications. The first synthetic white pigment was white lead, which had been discovered

Fermenting manure n the seventeenth century Dutch white lead was famous for its quality. Flat strips of lead, between 10 and 15 cm wide, were loosely rolled up – the lead strips were not allowed to touch one another - and placed into ceramic pots with legs above a layer of beer vinegar. The pots were then put close to one another in a fermentation shed on a bed of horse manure and straw. The pots were covered with planks, which in turn were covered by a layer of horse manure with straw, and a next layer of pots. After some eight such layers, with the final layer being covered with manure and straw, the shed was closed. The fermentation of the manure greatly increased the temperature which accelerated the process of converting

lead into pigment. After 4 to 6 weeks the white powder was tapped off the remaining lead, mixed with water to form a pulp and pulverised in a mill. Finally they were formed into small bricks and transported throughout Europe to a grateful public who used them for various applications, such as artists’ paints, house paints, plasterwork and glazing for ceramics. But they were also used for purposes that we would now find hard to imagine.

White as death

tanned complexion is still a relatively new fashion. For centuries white skin symbolised purity and wealth. People who had to work outside, after all, were the ones that developed brown skins. Wealthier people either worked indoors or not at all. In order to look as white as possible, for centuries ladies used white make-up that was often based on white lead. White lead, however, is highly poisonous, and so resulted in serious irritations such as painful eyes, pustules, warts and loose teeth. A premature death was often the eventual result, both for the ladies in question and the men who regularly kissed the ‘beautifully white’ skin. In America, this practice continued even until the late 19th century. Beauty certainly came at a high price. 73

Innocent white

hite lead remained the most popular white pigment until the arrival of zinc white, in the mid-nineteenth century. Initially zinc white, a zinc oxide, was too expensive to compete with white lead. And even when the production became considerably cheaper, zinc white was not able to displace white lead. Aside of the fact that zinc white, as 74

far as we know, is not hazardous to one's health, the two differ quite considerably in terms of their other properties. Zinc white is transparent and has a cool colour, whereas white lead is opaque and warm. White lead was particularly popular for painting houses due to its opacity. However, both pigments were used for artistsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; paints due to these differences in properties. It was only with the discovery of the totally innocent Titanium white, which was also warm and very opaque, that

the poisonous white lead was eventually ousted out in the 20th century. These days white lead is for all intents and purposes forbidden by law.

Did you know...

hite light consists of all the colours of the rainbow? And that when we see the colour white it means that our eyes are receiving all the colours of light in equal amounts? This makes white the mother of all colours.

Copyright Non-Profit academic project. Designed by V.B.R. Harvard—Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “Primary colors of light and pigment” http://learn.leighcotnoir.com/artspeak/elements-color/primary-colors/

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