Frankenthaler, Colors

Warming Trend, 2002

Speaking about colors, here are some colors dyed straight into the canvas. Helen Frankenthaler was one of the early, and female, pioneers of abstract expressionism, and she passed away this week at age 83. Good WSJ and NY Times articles on her career.

Mauve District, 2009

de Kooning's Women

Woman I

Check out my new article on de Kooning's Woman paintings and violence of them over at Escape Into Life magazine.

Celadon Talking Jars

Celadon green was not always the shade of green we now consider celadon, but it was said to possess magical properties. China had an early monopoly on celadon ceramics, which were a popular export in part because celadon was thought to have secret, magical powers. Colors from natural dyes and pigments were often associated with magic. People in central Asia believed that celadon acted as an antidote to poison, and that these dishes would protect against poisoned food and drink.

The people of Southeast Asia believed that the Chinese celadon jars could contain a magical spirit in their clay. Jars were valued most highly if they could produce a clear ringing sound when struck. This was the jar's ability to talk.

"...on the island of Luzon in the Phillipines, there were famous talking jars with their own names and characters. The most famous was called Magsawi and was believed to go off on long journeys on its own, particularly to see its girlfriend, a female talking jar on the island of Ilocos Norte. Legend had it that they had a baby together: a little talking jar, or perhaps at first a little screaming jar." -Color: A Natural History of the Palette, p.258 

These large celadon jars were highly prized in South Asia, and the most famous ones like Magsawi became known outside of their tribes. The Philippine folk tale of Magsawi says:

"Though that was many years ago, the jar still lives, and its name is Magsawi. Even now it talks; but some years ago a crack appeared in its side, and since then its language has not been understood by the Tinguian.
Sometimes Magsawi goes on long journeys alone when he visits his wife, a jar in Ilocos Norte, or his child, a small jar in San Quintin; but he always returns to Domayco on the hillside near the cave."

Read the whole folktale here.

Red, Orange, Yellow

RED

A new red from the new world once took Europe by storm, as countries vied to find the secret to this mysetrious dye from the Spanish colonies. They did not guess for a long time that it came from cochineals, little white bugs on pirckly pear cacti. These charming little bugs still color nearly everything consumable and red: lipstick, Cherry Coke, etc. Yum.

ORANGE

Orange madder are long roots that burrow deep in the ground, so much so that in Holland there were laws forcing farms to pull up their madder every few years lest it burrow into the dyke. The mysterious ingredient that created the beautfiul orange varnish of Stradavarious violins has long excited speculation.

Not purple, but YELLOW

Fields of purple crocuses create saffron, an expensive golden yellow, first produced by drying the crimson red stamen of the perennial autumn crocus flower. Now most saffron grows in Iran, but once a small, punny town in England grew saffron in the Middle Ages: Saffron Walden. Their coat-of-arms features a crocus... walled in.

All these fun facts come from Color: A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay. One more fun fact: Minium, which was the name for white lead heated turns until it turned "minium" red, was a popular color with Persian, Ottoman, and Indian artists in Medieval times. Their work then became known as "miniatures," which only more recently referenced size.

O Christmas Tree

Thy leaves are so unchanging. The first known "Tannenbaum," or Christmas tree, song lyrics date back to 1550. Above is the Metropolitan Museum's beautiful tree and its famous nativity scene. Next on my list is the Rockefeller Center tree, which I can't wait to see all lit up.

I got the Christmas tree spirit myself this weekend, at the annual NYC Santacon. Taken by the tree at South Street Seaport.

Back to Black

Martin Luther, Workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder

"...black really came into its own with the Reformation, whose leaders and artists led a full-fledged revolt against the pomp and display of the Catholic Church. Martin Luther is generally depicted in the most sober of blacks, while the era’s painters began to favor tenebrous colors in even their most dramatic compositions.”
-From "The Color that Wasn't a Color" article in ARTnews reviewing Black: The History of a Color

Making Purple in Mexico

Beautiful slideshow will take you through the traditional process of dyeing yarn purple with Murex in Oaxaca, Mexico. (Found this while inspired by my Colors book, even though I haven't gotten to purple yet. I did learn in my blacks and browns chapter that, similar to the Murex process, the color sepia comes from ink excreted by a cuttlefish.)

What goes up...

must come down. 

Last night I came across Sol LeWitt's Tower (Columbus) reduced to a heap of rubble. It took me a second to realize what had happened. The bricks filled a surprising number of orange bins. This sculpture was part of a nice installation in City Hall Park; I wonder what will come next.

Making Color

Color: A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay is a group of  digressive tales and fascinating anecdotes that together create a history of the colors that man has used. While bone black comes from animal bones despite some ghastly tales, brown was sometimes made with human remains, preferably that of mummies. White's history tends to be deadly. Artists had many options to create white before the late arrival of titanium white, but tended to prefer poisonous lead white. Aside from being deadly (so thus not a very good choice for the white lead facepaint ladies of a certain era used), lead white also must be used correctly or it will turn black (as it has in some of the Dunhuang caves in China). Knowledge of how to create and properly use such paints have often been carefully guarded secrets, passed down from artist to apprentice and in families. Deceitful colormen would create and sell paints that looked good, but didn't last. In fact, it is only recently that we expect paint colors to last. Perhaps that was on William Turner's mind when he knowingly used paints that would fade, and refused to touch discolored works up when people brought them back only a few years later.

Early paintbox, early 1800s

Finlay also makes the interesting point that it is only recently, in the past 200 years or so, that artists have been divorced from the creation of the paints that they use. The ability to buy pre-made paint and the change in social status from craftsman to artist occurred around the same time, probably not conincedentally. I've only read about how humans originally sourced and created the pigments of ochre, black, brown, and white, and I'm totally hooked. I can't wait to learn about the 'real' colors.