*Art Topic*
For some, colour is subjective, for others it's vital. In contemporary art, it opens up a world of possibilities. Curator Joana P. R. Neves welcomes María Castro Jímenez, whose Substack page "Pigments, Colours & Other Stories" reveals new pathways into art history, art making and creativity. Perfect for artists, ideal for polymaths, superb for creative souls and idyllic for those who enjoy a mix of prehistory, archeology, chemistry, anthropology and magic. Ultimately, this is the best podcast creativity!
Hosted by Joana P. R. Neves.
Guest: María Castro Jímenez
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Host & Founder
Exhibitionistas is hosted by Joana P. R. Neves, a seasoned curator and writer with over 20 years of experience in the contemporary visual art field. She loves demystifying contemporary art by blending art history, theory, and personal reflections to reveal how art can uncover views on today's hottest topics as much as on everlasting existential questions.
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For collaborations, text commissions and inquiries: joana@exhibitionistaspodcast.com
00:00 WELCOME TO OUR COLOUR EPISODE!
00:43 Is colour merely subjective?
02:33 Colour & Line in art academies
05:18 Colours are cultural. Is RED an exception?
01:02:54 BLUE, a favourite.
01:05:29 Book recommendation about colour in art
01:12:23 OUR GOODBYES.... until next time
00:00:00
OK, Joanna, it's time you're a grown up.
00:00:02
Now you can go into color a trepidation about color.
00:00:06
Why would your host be afraid of?
00:00:07
It one of them said, I've tasted ochre for a stomach ache and it
00:00:11
worked. It, it tastes like blood because
00:00:15
the thing that makes blood red is because it has iron oxide.
00:00:18
Ochre and our blood are made of the same thing.
00:00:21
I need to, I need to taste this. I need to know.
00:00:24
What is seeing color? Is it touching a word?
00:00:29
Holding an idea? Grabbing an impression?
00:00:33
Cooking a potion. My name is Maria Castro Jimenez
00:00:36
and I am a museum educator and art historian and a pigment and
00:00:41
colour researcher from Cordova, Spain.
00:00:43
I have a newsletter sub step called Pigment Colours and Other
00:00:48
Stories. Welcome to another Art topic
00:00:51
episode where we devote our time to a very specific theme, This
00:00:56
time colour and colour me surprised.
00:01:00
I am a line person through and through to the point where I
00:01:04
dedicated my PhD to it. But it's when I started reading
00:01:08
my guest sub stack that I got completely hooked on the theme.
00:01:13
And I think the danger here is that you may be completely
00:01:17
hooked to exhibition. This is an independent podcast
00:01:21
created and hosted by me, Joanna Pierre Nevers.
00:01:25
Because we're all both actors and spectators of art and life.
00:01:30
Enjoy this new episode. Eating, colour touching, making
00:01:37
and other methods to understand it.
00:01:45
My experience of colour was really peculiar because I have a
00:01:49
husband who's an artist but who is also colour blind.
00:01:53
And so it took a long time to understand that he sees the
00:01:58
world in gradations of beige, maroon, brown, grey, dark.
00:02:06
It's darkish. And then there's these pops of
00:02:09
color. And it took a long time to
00:02:11
understand how he sees red. And how do you know the colors
00:02:14
he sees? That's why it took so long,
00:02:16
because we had to debate. There's certain shades of green
00:02:20
that Fermi are already in on the yellow side of the spectrum.
00:02:24
For him, it's all green. OK.
00:02:26
So one episode that was really, really almost troubling was that
00:02:31
I used, I used to study in Paris.
00:02:33
He lived there with me for a year and I would go into the
00:02:37
library to study of the Santo Pompidou and he would come with
00:02:41
me. Being an artist, he was
00:02:43
interested in the section I was in which was aesthetics and
00:02:47
philosophy. And so I would be working, he
00:02:50
would be working by my side or reading or drawing, sketching.
00:02:54
And he kept asking for the time, all the time.
00:02:57
What time is it, what time is it, what time is it?
00:03:00
And at a certain and I would look up, look at the clock,
00:03:03
digital clock and I would tell him the time.
00:03:05
And suddenly, because we are all both as absent minded 1 as the
00:03:10
other, I realized why do I have to look at the clock?
00:03:14
Why doesn't he look at the clock?
00:03:15
And I said why? Why are you asking me for the
00:03:17
time all the time and making me look at the time?
00:03:19
Are you trying to tell me something?
00:03:21
And he said what clock? And I pointed.
00:03:27
Up. He didn't see the numbers.
00:03:29
It was a black background and the digital numbers were red and
00:03:33
he saw a black rectangle. Mm Hmm.
00:03:38
And that's when I knew he was color blind.
00:03:40
That's how I discovered. But did he know at the time?
00:03:43
Yes, because his mother is also color blind.
00:03:46
His brother is color blind, by the way.
00:03:48
I think about 80 or more than that percent of the population,
00:03:53
the color blind population is male.
00:03:55
Yes. So his mom is really, really in
00:03:58
the minority. Yeah.
00:03:59
And that's how we started talking about color.
00:04:02
And it may be one of the reasons why I was not really into
00:04:08
thinking about it, because the experience of color is so or can
00:04:14
be so incredibly different from person to person that for me, I
00:04:19
kind of put the subjects, I, I put it aside as something that
00:04:23
is personal. In working on the line, I ended
00:04:27
up learning about the fact that actually line and color were
00:04:32
historically separated, particularly in France at the
00:04:36
Royal Academy of Arts, there were these huge debates about
00:04:39
whether the line was more important than the color.
00:04:44
And there were there was a big majority for the line and a
00:04:47
small majority and a small minority of color apologists.
00:04:52
And then I realized that since Pliny the Elder, So since, you
00:04:57
know, the beginning of our current era, there was this idea
00:05:00
that the origin of art was the outline of a shadow.
00:05:04
And that's where the skill was. And even throughout the
00:05:08
Renaissance, this idea of design.
00:05:10
So design was more than drawing. It was conceptualizing and
00:05:14
materializing shapes and ideas. That was the excellence of art,
00:05:20
even though the masterpiece, the work, the sculpture stemmed from
00:05:24
it and then became something else and and was so full of
00:05:29
color, but the real quality of the art piece was in its designo
00:05:36
and it's drawing. So there was always this
00:05:39
separation. I was thinking when you were
00:05:41
saying that even though this might be like kind of an
00:05:45
artificial separation that was created from an intellectual
00:05:48
point of view during the Renaissance, even during
00:05:52
prehistory, the first images we have inside caves, etc, they
00:05:59
already might have this separation because we have
00:06:01
carvings and we have paintings. So carvings are only lines.
00:06:06
They paid attention to volume and shade and things like that,
00:06:11
like the rock formations inside the caves, but they didn't use
00:06:16
color in in these cases. And then we have paintings that
00:06:19
are probably the ones that are more familiar to everyone
00:06:22
because carvings are very hard to see in photographs.
00:06:25
So you're not going to see a lot of carvings in, in a prehistory
00:06:28
book, for example, that even when you are inside caves, it's
00:06:32
sometimes archaeologists don't see them.
00:06:34
It takes them a long time to notice them.
00:06:37
But we are more familiar with classic animal paintings in in
00:06:41
Paleolithic caves. And even in those cases, I think
00:06:45
the most abundant kind of paintings are just the line,
00:06:49
just a drawing without anything inside.
00:06:52
Ironically, the ones we really know and appreciate are the ones
00:06:55
that have a lot of color in them.
00:06:56
Like for example, Altamira gave in Spain.
00:07:01
There's a lot of color and then they used really interesting
00:07:04
shades, mixing the red and the black to create the appearance
00:07:08
of the the animal for and, and you can see all of these.
00:07:12
So the ones that are actually more popular of the paintings,
00:07:16
but probably they're in the minority.
00:07:17
When you think about all the things that are there, it's
00:07:19
usually only a black line or a carving.
00:07:22
So this might be even an older debate than you were saying.
00:07:28
There's a huge subjectivity that for me, became the experience of
00:07:34
color. What about you?
00:07:35
I can remember exactly the the conversation that took me into
00:07:40
this. So I was talking to a coworker
00:07:42
in a museum and we were we were talking about painting in the
00:07:46
collection. And in this painting it was
00:07:48
Philip the second. The Spanish came from the 16th
00:07:51
century. And usually in his portraits,
00:07:55
he's always wearing black. There is this idea that the
00:07:57
reason he wears black is because he was very serious, very
00:08:01
austere, because he was very, he was very stoic.
00:08:04
And this is the idea most people know about, about him and his
00:08:08
portraits. I was telling this to my friend
00:08:10
and she said, no, no, that's not the reason he wore black all the
00:08:13
time because he was a very expensive dye.
00:08:16
So using a black dye was a way to show power.
00:08:19
And I was like, what? How is it possible I didn't know
00:08:24
this? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:08:25
Because when they when the Spanish arrived in America, they
00:08:29
found new dyes and pigments that were very high quality and.
00:08:33
And that was a way to show wealth.
00:08:35
She flipped a switch in my mind was like, I need to know more
00:08:39
about this. So I started reading about this
00:08:42
about. And then it was the whole new
00:08:44
world I didn't know about. And I went into the biggest
00:08:47
rabbit hole ever, and I'm still in it six years later because I
00:08:52
realized I didn't know where color came from.
00:08:55
And I studied our history. So how was it possible?
00:08:58
Like no professor ever ever told me, oh, this is how paint was
00:09:04
made or this is the colors that were available at different
00:09:08
historical periods. I I never got this in a college
00:09:13
class. So we have a very conceptual
00:09:15
relationship to color, is what you're saying, as opposed to the
00:09:19
economy of color, the politics of color, the materiality of
00:09:23
color? Yes, the technicity of color.
00:09:27
So what do you What was the thing that when you fell into
00:09:31
that rabbit hole, that completely pulled you into it?
00:09:35
After that first shock, what was the thing that kept you going?
00:09:39
Now everything is industrially made, so we don't we don't know
00:09:44
how it is made. For us, it's just color.
00:09:46
It's just a visual characteristic, but it's not
00:09:50
something that is made from a specific material.
00:09:53
I was shocked that I never wonder about this and no one
00:09:58
ever mentioned this in in an art class or working in museums.
00:10:02
It's like I need to know. I need to, I need to learn about
00:10:06
this new world that it was like it was hiding in plain sight.
00:10:10
And now that I see it, I cannot Unsee it, you know?
00:10:12
It's like I see it everywhere. How does it affect your
00:10:14
relationship to color on the day-to-day basis?
00:10:17
For example, Is that is there an impact on the way now that you
00:10:20
relate to things? I was watching documentary not
00:10:24
long ago. I think it was about China, a
00:10:29
different historical period in China and they wish.
00:10:31
I don't know if it was about the Great Wall or some royal tunes,
00:10:34
I cannot remember, but they were making kind of a small
00:10:39
recreation about the people from the past and they show prisoners
00:10:43
working at a great works from for an emperor I guess.
00:10:47
And they were all wearing this very intense red in this
00:10:52
documentary. And I was like, this is so
00:10:54
wrong. Like you would never use this
00:10:57
super expensive, super exclusive dye for a prisoner to be working
00:11:02
on some royal tone. So I see these kind of things
00:11:07
all the time when I watch like, for example, like a TV series
00:11:10
about ancient Rome. I'm complaining.
00:11:12
I guess I I got very annoying about this complaining all the
00:11:15
time. Can you quickly tell us about
00:11:17
The Color Purple precisely in the Roman Empire?
00:11:20
Tyrion Purple was originally made by the Phoenicians who were
00:11:24
a group of people who lived in current Lebanon and they were
00:11:28
travelers and merchants and they didn't have a lot of resources
00:11:32
in their land. So they had to be very
00:11:34
inventive. And they were incredibly
00:11:36
inventive. And they discovered that from a
00:11:41
mollusk that you can find on the beach, you can make this intense
00:11:46
purple. Sometimes it's like a dark red.
00:11:48
It's not always the same color. And it was it's very high
00:11:52
quality. So it's very, it's very long
00:11:54
lasting. It doesn't fade with the
00:11:55
sunlight, which which is the most common thing to happen with
00:11:59
dyes and they create like like kind of an empire, like a
00:12:04
merchant empire from this, because they started selling
00:12:07
this colour all over the Mediterranean.
00:12:09
When the Romans learned this secret, because all this
00:12:13
knowledge was secret, it became even more exclusive.
00:12:15
They decided it was a colour only for the royal family and
00:12:19
only for the Roman emperor, and it was even a death sentence if
00:12:22
someone else tried to to wear these colors.
00:12:26
So it became the most exclusive color ever.
00:12:30
And then it continued to be a royal symbol during the during
00:12:33
Byzantium. So it was for a long time it
00:12:37
represented royalty, I guess, in power.
00:12:42
Purple was the plastic surgery of our time in some ways, but it
00:12:48
was. More exclusive because even more
00:12:51
exclusive. Way more, Yeah, because a lot of
00:12:53
people that are not very rich can maybe get surgery.
00:12:58
But this was just like, OK, I'm going to give you an example.
00:13:02
You need 10 seashells to get enough dye for just like a
00:13:10
tunic. They almost made this whole
00:13:13
species disappear. Do they still exist?
00:13:17
Yes, they do. And, and the the reason
00:13:19
actually, I think they traveled so much is because they were
00:13:21
following like looking for more, more of these seashells and they
00:13:26
came to Spain and stay here. They stayed in southern Spain
00:13:31
for that reason, because you can find those seashells in here and
00:13:36
they are the people who founded the first cities in Spain,
00:13:41
Cardiff and Malaga, because they had these Seychelles available
00:13:45
to them and they started a whole industry of Tyrian purple in in
00:13:50
southern Spain. You know, there's this Arctic
00:13:52
fight, this fight for the Arctic, for the rare minerals.
00:13:55
I mean, same old story, right? The economy of the materials is
00:14:00
incredible. But what I enjoy about your
00:14:02
approach is that you're not really concerned immediately by
00:14:07
the color theory and these color charts that we usually study in
00:14:12
in art history. You're looking really into the
00:14:14
materiality of color, and this story really encapsulated very
00:14:19
well your interest in that materiality.
00:14:23
So tell me a bit more about how it is that you approach the
00:14:27
subject from that perspective. I think at the beginning it was
00:14:30
because I realized that the color was a material 1st and I
00:14:35
had never considered the material aspect of pigments or
00:14:39
dice. Because I think the industrial
00:14:42
revolution is very important in this change of perception,
00:14:47
because now everything is made in a factory and in a synthetic
00:14:52
way and we don't know how it is made.
00:14:54
But that was not the case before.
00:14:56
Do you know that Marcel Duchamp, I remember reading about him
00:15:00
when I was like fixated on his work and I remember him saying
00:15:05
that a tube of paint is a ready made.
00:15:07
So ready made is a concept that he coined around 1913, which is
00:15:12
this idea of the found object in some ways.
00:15:15
And so he said, you know, painting is a ready made because
00:15:19
you are using ready made to make painting.
00:15:21
So just to corroborate what you're saying about the impacts
00:15:25
on even the idea idea of art making that the industrial
00:15:30
revolution brought about. I think it's one of the most
00:15:33
important changes in all history.
00:15:37
Now we don't know how most things are made, but before that
00:15:40
people were very conscious of that because it was very
00:15:42
expensive. And and another thing in that is
00:15:46
good to consider this is the idea of fixed colors.
00:15:50
For example, Pantone has this classification of different
00:15:54
colors with a number and a name. And we know this is this
00:15:58
specific blue or we know this is blue.
00:16:00
But for people from the past, it was exactly like that because
00:16:04
they didn't have fixed colors. So they knew what indigo was.
00:16:09
For example, a plant that is used to make a blue dye, but you
00:16:12
would never get the exact same color from a natural source.
00:16:15
So depending on the specific plant or the specific seashell
00:16:19
or the process, temperature, recipe, etc, you would get
00:16:24
different colors. Similar, but different.
00:16:26
So the important thing, it wasn't the shade of blue you
00:16:29
got, but that it was indigo. You know, because the important
00:16:33
thing was the material. The.
00:16:34
Source. Are we talking about art making?
00:16:39
Painting. Are we talking about textiles?
00:16:43
Everything. OK.
00:16:45
So that's really interesting. So the relationship to indigo
00:16:48
would change depending on the technique that you applied to
00:16:52
the material, what that is extracted from.
00:16:55
Now I'm curious about also the differences between the kinds of
00:17:00
indigo. Say, for example, does that also
00:17:05
help in terms of knowing where a painting comes from or knowing
00:17:10
where a textile comes from and identifying certain art pieces
00:17:17
or Yeah. There is a hot topic now that is
00:17:20
called provenance research in pigments and they trace the
00:17:25
origin of a particular paint. So because you can study the
00:17:29
geologic properties of like you know this is specific mineral
00:17:34
and this mineral can only be found in these regions.
00:17:37
So we know either these people had to go there to get this
00:17:40
mineral or they had to trade with someone else.
00:17:43
And if it was from very far away and very scarce, you know, this
00:17:48
was valuable. And they took it took a lot of
00:17:52
effort or resources to make these paints more, more specific
00:17:57
case would be Maya Blue. I don't know if you're familiar
00:18:00
with this term. So it was a specific paint made
00:18:04
by the by the Mayan people in Central America.
00:18:08
And you can get different colors with Maya blue.
00:18:12
Sometimes it looks more like turquoise, like greenish.
00:18:15
Sometimes it's more like a light blue because it depends on the
00:18:19
process to make it and the plant.
00:18:21
So they used indigo, but sometimes they heated the
00:18:26
material during maybe more time, less time, or higher
00:18:30
temperature, lower temperature, or maybe they mixed the pigment
00:18:34
with specific clay or specific binders.
00:18:39
So that changed the color. The important thing in Maya Blue
00:18:43
was that it was made with indigo and a specific clay, and that
00:18:48
was the thing that made it Maya Blue.
00:18:50
It wasn't the color, it was the materials used for the recipe.
00:18:55
So now I'm curious as well in terms of how you would identify
00:18:59
color and refer to it linguistically.
00:19:02
You're making me see that the words we have for colors are a
00:19:07
sort of reduction almost on in the culinary sense of much a
00:19:15
much wider spectrum of relationships to colour.
00:19:19
So would colours be referred to in different ways, say in the
00:19:23
13th century, in the 15th century, in the 17th century?
00:19:27
Yes, it was. This is one of the things that
00:19:29
makes historical research about colour more difficult because
00:19:33
they used a lot of different terms.
00:19:36
Sometimes they were talking about always about the same
00:19:37
pigment, but we don't know. So we just get like 10 different
00:19:41
names and we don't really know what they are talking about or
00:19:44
if they are referring to the same thing.
00:19:47
And also the terms for color changed a lot from one language
00:19:52
to another, from one culture to another.
00:19:55
We don't really know the color of Tyrion purple because it
00:19:58
could be sometimes more purple, it could be sometimes be more
00:20:01
red, and sometimes even like. Closer to blue.
00:20:06
So this is another example in which you can see the important
00:20:10
was the material. It was made from the specific
00:20:14
seashell, but you don't know exactly the color they got in
00:20:19
different places. So sometimes it looks more like
00:20:22
like a like a very dark maroon. Sometimes it's referred to as
00:20:27
royal blue or sometimes is closer to our idea of purple,
00:20:33
but a very dark one, not like a light, like a very intense dark
00:20:37
1. So it's very hard from language
00:20:41
and without clear images to even understand what was that color
00:20:46
for them in in the past and because the way they
00:20:50
conceptualize this color is not the one we use today.
00:20:54
So it's very hard from language and without clear images to even
00:21:00
understand what was that color for them in in the past.
00:21:05
And because the way they conceptualize this color is not
00:21:08
the one we use today. So it's sometimes really don't
00:21:12
we really don't know what they, what they were seeing, what they
00:21:15
were talking about. Western culture, and
00:21:18
particularly Europe, is considered to have a very poor
00:21:23
relationship with color and being less colorful than other
00:21:28
cultures and other parts of the world.
00:21:30
I'm thinking about the book Chromophobia by David Batchelor,
00:21:33
who has this whole theory about the fact that we are so fixated
00:21:37
on white and purity, minimalism and absence of color means that
00:21:42
there's a real difficulty with otherness and this association
00:21:46
between color and the feminine, as well as being one of the
00:21:50
reasons the a sort of misogynistic background that we
00:21:54
have in Europe. But now I'm also thinking on the
00:21:57
other side of things, which is maybe we didn't have that much
00:22:01
in terms of materials on the ground, in the soil, the
00:22:04
insects, because some colors come from insects as well, from
00:22:08
living beings. So maybe it's also our landscape
00:22:13
and the the resources that we have.
00:22:15
Yes, you're definitely right. One of the reasons why European
00:22:21
culture is not as colorful as those of Africa, for example, or
00:22:26
South America or Southern Asia is because we don't have as many
00:22:31
color ants in the landscape in the plants here.
00:22:36
The closer you are to the Ecuador and the tropical regions
00:22:42
of the world, the better pigments and dice you're going
00:22:45
to get because you have more plants, you have more animals.
00:22:48
So for example, India is very rich in, in pigments and, and
00:22:52
colour sources. But Europe, especially northern
00:22:55
Europe, because of the climate, the the weather we have here and
00:23:00
and the plants and animals in this kind of landscape, we don't
00:23:03
have as many colour sources. All the colorants we've
00:23:08
mentioned so far are not from Europe.
00:23:10
Indigo is from Asian America and purple is from the
00:23:16
Mediterranean. I have been following your
00:23:19
publications on your sub stack page and you talk a lot about
00:23:23
your walks outside, going outside, looking at things,
00:23:27
picking up things. And you have sort of transformed
00:23:31
my relationship to my own walks because I think, oh, I have such
00:23:35
a poor relationship to my surroundings because I don't
00:23:38
think at all about this apart from through my own daughter who
00:23:45
was making gum arabica the other day.
00:23:46
And I was thinking what is happening?
00:23:49
You know, what is this? And it was from a Cherry Tree,
00:23:52
so it's really fascinating to see someone who actually can
00:23:58
pick things around their home and make pigments.
00:24:02
I look at everything as a potential pigment, I guess.
00:24:06
So one important thing that happened is that I discovered
00:24:10
there are ochre mines very close to where I live.
00:24:14
This is another shocking moment because I've I've been here my
00:24:17
most of my my life and I never knew that there were ochre mines
00:24:22
in this area. And I was first told by a local
00:24:26
archaeologist and he told I was asking probably about pigments
00:24:30
and he said, oh, but you can go get some red ochre in in these
00:24:34
mines. And what he brought me my first
00:24:37
actually piece of ochre. What is?
00:24:38
What is ochre? Yes, ochre is an is a mineral
00:24:42
that contains iron oxides and it's usually it's either yellow
00:24:49
or red or brown can be sometimes more like purple or more like
00:24:54
orange. So it's this range from light
00:24:56
yellow to dark brown with red in the middle and is the the oldest
00:25:04
pigment in the world used by by humans from from the Stone Age
00:25:09
because it's very abundant. You can find it if you go
00:25:12
outside, you will probably going to find some iron oxides on the
00:25:16
on on any kind of soil that you see.
00:25:19
But in this region particularly, there's a lot of very good red
00:25:24
iron oxides. So there is a mine that is
00:25:29
exploited right now very close to where I live, and most people
00:25:34
don't know about it, as I was saying, because we don't pay
00:25:37
attention to these things. So when they told me, I decided
00:25:41
I wanted to go there and see for myself because I need to.
00:25:44
I like to interact in person with things.
00:25:47
I don't like to just thinking about them.
00:25:49
I want to involve myself physically and I, I decided to
00:25:54
go and search for this place, just took my car and drove and I
00:25:58
asked people around like, do you know where this is?
00:26:01
Because it's not something so easy to find.
00:26:03
I started locate locating all the okra mines.
00:26:07
Most of them are abandoned right now.
00:26:09
There used to be a lot more. There's just one that is open
00:26:11
right now, but all of the others are abandoned.
00:26:14
So you can go there and you can just take rocks from the soil
00:26:20
and it's an amazing pigment. They they actually make red
00:26:23
paint with it in, in a factory. So it's used to make paint.
00:26:29
And then I decided I had to try and learn how to turn that into
00:26:34
a pigment. So I got into this path to learn
00:26:38
how to make all these things for myself.
00:26:41
So that's the reason I started going.
00:26:44
Just going back to oka, now that you're saying that it's the
00:26:48
oldest pigment, it's bringing to mind something that I read a
00:26:53
while ago, which was that there was this the remains of a shaman
00:26:58
from the Paleolithic, if I'm not mistaken, found in what is now
00:27:02
the Czech Republic, and the shaman's body.
00:27:05
So the all the bones were covered in Oka a paint, and so
00:27:10
it was presumed that the body was completely covered in ochre
00:27:15
either for the burial or as a shaman.
00:27:19
I am very interested in the archaeology of human origins.
00:27:23
It's called, so it's, it's the way you study human evolution
00:27:28
through archaeology of a Stone Age.
00:27:30
So now pigments in this period are like huge.
00:27:34
It's they're becoming very important research field that
00:27:37
was completely ignored before, I don't know, maybe 2025 years ago
00:27:41
in scientific papers. They usually have this
00:27:44
perspective about chemistry and geology and they got this
00:27:51
pigment for this place. So they travel to get it and
00:27:55
they grown the pigment, but they don't really talk about the
00:27:58
physical like pigments are physical things.
00:28:01
So I think there's an important part of research that is that
00:28:05
you do things yourself if you can, because you're going to
00:28:08
learn things you're not going to learn just reading about about
00:28:11
it or thinking about it. When you touch something, see
00:28:15
something, smell something, you can even taste it because in
00:28:20
some places in Africa, people still eat ochre for stomach
00:28:24
ache, for example. This is another thing I wanted
00:28:27
to mention about pigments as a material is they usually have
00:28:30
medicinal properties. So this is another whole
00:28:33
dimension, dimension to these to these materials, not only for
00:28:38
making color, they usually have other uses as well.
00:28:42
So they usually have spiritual value and they also have
00:28:45
medicinal properties. So I remember listening to a
00:28:50
conference from some archaeologists and one of them
00:28:54
said, I've even tasted ochre because someone gave it to me
00:29:01
for a stomach ache. And it worked.
00:29:04
And they usually said it tastes like blood because blood, the
00:29:08
thing, the thing that makes blood red is because it has iron
00:29:12
oxide, it has oxygen, oxygen and iron.
00:29:14
So ochre and our blood are made of the same thing.
00:29:19
And I said OK, I need to. I need to taste this because I
00:29:22
need to know. I was listening to another
00:29:25
podcast called The Infinite Monkey Cage, which is a sort of
00:29:29
a scientific BBC podcast, and they were talking to geologists
00:29:34
and they said that the best way to know the properties of a
00:29:38
stone is to lick it or even try your teeth on it.
00:29:46
And has everyone was absolutely, you know, flabbergasted.
00:29:52
But all the geologists were laughing and saying, yeah, of
00:29:54
course, of course, that's how that's how it's done.
00:29:57
That you cannot not have that relationship with the, with what
00:30:00
you're studying. And it was really fascinating
00:30:02
because it really correlates to what you're saying.
00:30:05
And I didn't understand at the time, but now I see that it's
00:30:08
probably to do with the components and the that tells
00:30:11
them the components of the of the of the stones that they're
00:30:16
the, you know, the, the specimens that they're dealing
00:30:18
with. And because sensory information
00:30:21
is, is important too, but we don't really consider that in
00:30:24
academia, for example, everything is very intellectual
00:30:28
and theoretical, and you cannot know everything if you don't
00:30:36
learn from every possible source.
00:30:38
So if you interact with the material and you see the color
00:30:43
and the texture and the way you can use it and how it feels and
00:30:47
the smell, the taste, you get a lot of information that you
00:30:52
wouldn't get just, you know, in a lab.
00:30:54
You know, there's a lot of other dimensions to this research to
00:30:58
the different uses if you want to understand the medicinal
00:31:01
properties. And another thing that that is
00:31:05
used for is like is a sunscreen. So if you cover your skin with
00:31:11
red ochre, with red ochre paint, you will protect yourself from
00:31:16
from the sun. And this is something that they
00:31:19
probably already knew in the Stone Age like 100 years ago
00:31:25
in Southern Africa and is still done today by indigenous people
00:31:31
in Africa. They still cover their skin.
00:31:33
The cold so the and also the the cold that you put inside your
00:31:38
eye apparently by the Touaregs I think if I'm not mistaken I read
00:31:42
somewhere that it was also protective because of the the
00:31:46
winds that carry sand and dust. Yes.
00:31:49
So usually it usually has yeah, it's true And and some kind of
00:31:53
codes contain lead, a little bit of lead.
00:31:57
So even though you would think this is toxic to put it in your
00:32:01
eye, there is some research that says it was actually good to
00:32:07
fight infections in your eyes because the small amount of lead
00:32:12
would stimulate your system to defend itself from infections.
00:32:16
So it was actually a way to protect your eyes in a very
00:32:20
literal sense. And this was discovered not very
00:32:24
long ago. And trying to understand if the
00:32:28
call made in ancient Egypt was toxic, why would people use it
00:32:33
for so long? This is another thing we have to
00:32:35
consider with this kind of, they weren't stupid, you know, it's
00:32:39
like because they didn't have modern science doesn't mean they
00:32:42
didn't know what worked or how to use things.
00:32:46
So if they used call in Egypt for thousands of years, it was
00:32:50
for a reason. If it was terrible, they
00:32:52
wouldn't have used it. So this is another thing to
00:32:55
consider in this kind of ancient knowledge or indigenous
00:32:59
knowledge, is that there is a whole odd other realm of
00:33:03
knowledge that goes beyond. A lot that Elizabeth, the Queen
00:33:07
Elizabeth, right? You covered her face in white
00:33:12
lead and destroyed her health because of it.
00:33:16
And also there was another one, Deando Poitier, who would, would
00:33:21
eat gold and destroyed her, her health as well.
00:33:26
She would drink it, I think in, in something in water regularly
00:33:30
because she believed that it was good for her.
00:33:33
I mean, I'm, I'm sure it probably wasn't her.
00:33:35
It was someone around her. And it's so interesting that as
00:33:38
soon as you introduce cosmetics, because now we're learning that
00:33:42
the cosmetics we use are a big part of them, but for your
00:33:47
health, because they are not at all connected to that sensorial
00:33:51
experience and ancestral knowledge.
00:33:53
We are trying to look for effects rather than having a
00:33:57
previous connection to those materials, which kind of ties in
00:34:02
with this idea of drinking gold because you think, oh, it's
00:34:04
wealth, it's rare, therefore it's good.
00:34:08
And applying the symbolic power to color through the effect only
00:34:17
and not through the whole history can bring really bad
00:34:22
results and outcomes apparently. Yes, and and there were cosmetic
00:34:27
practices in the past that were bad for you.
00:34:29
I mean, it's not like everything was great and yes and in the
00:34:35
same the same today, because one of the things about pigments
00:34:38
that was quite a discovery for me as well is most of them are
00:34:42
toxic, toxic. So Maria, I think now is a good
00:34:50
time to talk about your page because you have started
00:34:54
developing in your page pigment guide.
00:34:58
So that's one of the reasons why I invited you because it your
00:35:03
essays are really fascinating. But I think it's interesting for
00:35:06
the listeners to know that all this knowledge that you're just
00:35:09
giving us, you know, a little glimpse on today, you are
00:35:14
actually compiling it in a guide that you provide in your page.
00:35:20
So my first content in South Stack was more theoretical.
00:35:25
It was more about the history of pigments.
00:35:27
I talked about Maya blue or TM Purple or Indian yellow and it
00:35:35
was about the history of these materials.
00:35:37
But then I thought about making something more specific about
00:35:41
how to make pigments yourself. And then that developed into
00:35:46
made your own materials. And it was like, it was like a
00:35:49
whole thing because I am experimenting all the time with
00:35:53
everything I pick up in in my walks.
00:35:56
So I, I learned how to make your own charcoals from for drawing
00:36:00
or your own binders for your watercolor.
00:36:04
And, and I realized I could explain and connect all this
00:36:10
knowledge in a more like practical way, how to make all
00:36:14
your things. And maybe for people interested
00:36:17
in, in this process or for artists who want to explore to
00:36:21
make their own paint or their own our materials from their own
00:36:25
landscape. So you don't buy something that
00:36:28
comes from a factory or that comes from very far away, but
00:36:31
you might have a lot of things in your own place that you
00:36:36
haven't explored yet. And maybe you can find minerals,
00:36:40
maybe you can find wood or plants that you can use to, to
00:36:44
experiment in your own work. So I decided to create a
00:36:48
different section in, in the page that was about this
00:36:52
process. And so I have both, I have the
00:36:56
the theoretical historical archaeological exploration of of
00:37:01
pigments and then the practical way to actually make those
00:37:06
things yourself, if you're interested in in doing that.
00:37:10
Can you give us an like a little tidbit of something that might
00:37:14
be useful for someone reading the guide and looking outside
00:37:19
through their window and thinking, oh, I may just make
00:37:22
that with something over there. Yes, I think the first thing you
00:37:27
have to learn is you have to look at the ground with
00:37:31
different with different eyes because when I've because I
00:37:34
teach workshops about this in person to hear where I live.
00:37:38
So I noticed that when I talk this to people, the first time
00:37:43
we go outside and we find potential pigments in, in the
00:37:48
landscape at the end of the class, this, they're looking at
00:37:52
the ground non-stop and, and with curiosity, you know, like,
00:37:57
Oh, I never consider that these things that I never, never paid
00:38:01
attention to might be useful to make paint.
00:38:05
And oh, they, they start to notice the color of the rocks or
00:38:10
the soils that they never looked at before.
00:38:12
Or they start to pick everything up like I do and and touch it
00:38:17
and think oh this might be good or maybe not.
00:38:20
Because we talked about toxicity and I was thinking about my
00:38:25
experience of doing studio visits.
00:38:27
So acrylic paint is incredibly polluting.
00:38:30
Do you clean your brushes? You wash them and then the
00:38:33
acrylic goes into the water, goes into the layers of the
00:38:37
ground. I do question artists and I
00:38:40
asked them if they know that they're polluting and whether
00:38:45
they're concerned. And of course most of them are.
00:38:48
I mean, all of them. I would say even for artists
00:38:51
using paint is not just thinking conceptually about color.
00:38:55
Paint is a materiality. And so one of the first answers
00:38:58
I get is, well, yes, I would love to give up on the acrylics,
00:39:03
but I don't like all paints because acrylic is fast, it is
00:39:08
great. It has a different texture than
00:39:11
oil paint and then watercolor. So they develop their skill with
00:39:16
that particular material. It's also a question of gesture.
00:39:20
It's also a question of reaction to the canvas or whatever they
00:39:22
paint on. So it is a real issue for
00:39:26
artists nowadays to make sure that they can rehabilitate maybe
00:39:35
other techniques. But because you mentioned
00:39:37
toxicity, I was wondering if that's something that you come
00:39:42
across this idea of the polluting material.
00:39:45
And because obviously we're listening to you and I'm pretty
00:39:48
sure my listeners are thinking the same thing, which is it's
00:39:52
organic, it's natural, therefore it's great and it's better.
00:39:56
And why don't we as artists, as craftspeople, use those
00:40:02
materials that you're advocating for?
00:40:04
Well. I have to say first that natural
00:40:07
doesn't mean safe. So there are a lot of minerals
00:40:12
there are toxic as well. You mentioned before white lead
00:40:16
for makeup and, and white lead has been used for, I don't know,
00:40:19
millennia as the main white paint and it's always been toxic
00:40:25
and it was used as makeup in ancient Greece.
00:40:28
Even so if you get something from nature, that doesn't make
00:40:34
it safe necessarily. But it's true that a lot of
00:40:40
colorants made today for paint, for dice, for our foods, you
00:40:44
know, for everything we have in surrounding us can be toxic and
00:40:51
are made in a synthetic way. So one way to maybe try to go
00:40:58
more natural and and more organic is making things from
00:41:03
your own landscape, you know, because I mean, depending on
00:41:07
where you live, but you probably don't have a bled mine where you
00:41:12
live. I don't know, probably know.
00:41:14
If you do, don't go get to get payments of course.
00:41:17
Copper for example is another mineral.
00:41:20
They can. It is.
00:41:21
They can make green and blue in the form of malachite and
00:41:25
azurite and can be very toxic. The other day I posted a picture
00:41:31
I think or or a video on sub stack showing that I have some
00:41:34
malachite in like in a stone and everyone was warning me like be
00:41:40
very careful it's super toxic. Copper is terrible and I don't
00:41:46
have it in powder, I just have this tongue and some people even
00:41:49
told me wash your hands afterwards.
00:41:51
So some minerals that I used to make pigments since a long time
00:41:55
ago are toxic. And one of the things I cover in
00:41:59
my pigment guide is safety measures.
00:42:01
So be careful when you go there, when you pick something, when
00:42:04
you touch you touch it or if you try to make it into a pigment.
00:42:08
But I explained that you can use some things to protect yourself
00:42:12
if you're worried about that. And because the only way to know
00:42:16
if a soil has heavy metal is you have to take it to a lab and
00:42:20
they tell you exactly what it has.
00:42:21
And maybe that's not available to you or you don't want to do
00:42:25
that. We're talking about toxicity,
00:42:27
right? We're talking about something
00:42:29
that may harm us, but that can live in nature.
00:42:33
Yes, but yeah. So yeah, no, acrylics different.
00:42:36
You're right, acrylics are different because it does damage
00:42:41
the environment. So yeah, you're not gonna,
00:42:43
you're not going to hurt your landscape with the minerals that
00:42:47
are already there. It's more to protect yourself.
00:42:51
But another thing I think is interesting about this is when
00:42:55
you use the materials around you, you are helping the
00:43:01
environment in a different way. And it's they don't have to
00:43:04
travel from far away. Because when you buy some
00:43:07
things, sometimes it comes from the other side of the world and
00:43:11
there's a lot of pollution in the travelling of all the goods
00:43:15
that we get from other continents, other countries.
00:43:18
So it's a way to also be conscious about using your the
00:43:23
resources in your landscape, learning how to do this for
00:43:28
yourself, which I also think it's interesting to be able to
00:43:32
make something for yourself with your hands.
00:43:36
Is there are there any organic materials that in the same way
00:43:40
can be polluting in in the sense of hurting the environment?
00:43:45
I think in the case of plants and animals know, but in the
00:43:49
case of minerals, yes, because for example cobalt, zinc,
00:43:55
cadmium, all of these minerals are used to make colors.
00:43:58
Zinc is used for white, cobalt for blue and cadmium for red and
00:44:05
yellow. And they usually give you a
00:44:08
warning when you buy these pigments, like the be very
00:44:12
careful where you throw this away.
00:44:15
When you wash your hands, don't breathe it in.
00:44:17
Don't touch it with your hands. So, yeah, if you pour this into
00:44:23
the land, it might kill the plants around it.
00:44:28
But if it's a very small amount, you know, and it's just like a
00:44:31
piece of land that is not, it's not a garden, you know, it's OK.
00:44:35
But yeah, you you have to be mindful.
00:44:37
Yeah, we go back to the idea of the lead in the coal where it's
00:44:41
actually good if it's in a small quantity, because I think that's
00:44:45
also the the intricacies of preserving the environment is
00:44:50
also because again, we think conceptually about things.
00:44:53
So we think leads bad. But you just gave us such an
00:44:56
interesting example where it's a question of quantity.
00:44:59
And there's this kind of like panic nowadays with so many
00:45:02
foods where people think, Oh my gosh, I can't eat this because
00:45:05
even synthetic foods, oh, it has this cholera that's really bad.
00:45:09
But actually research has shown that in small quantities, your
00:45:14
body is able to just wash it off and it's not bad for you.
00:45:17
So there's also this very intricate chemistry and
00:45:22
measuring of materials that is so interesting to know when you
00:45:27
kind of get into the materiality of these elements and not just
00:45:31
the effect that they might have. And maybe regulating aesthetics
00:45:35
through that history is something that could be
00:45:40
interesting to think about. You know, kind of regulating the
00:45:43
relationship we can have visually rather than regulating
00:45:48
our whole lives through visual impact may be subverting.
00:45:52
That's that relationship is not such a bad thing actually,
00:45:56
because that has been brought about by technology.
00:45:58
For example, this idea that you take a picture and then you see
00:46:03
if you had fun or not, you know, and you look at your phone and
00:46:07
you assess things through the recording of them or through the
00:46:11
image or something that you extracted from that moment or
00:46:14
that environment, you know, in a very kind of like strange
00:46:17
parallel. But it might not be a bad idea
00:46:19
sometimes to subvert those things and, and to be very
00:46:23
mindful of absolutes, I guess I would say.
00:46:27
I think it's a good warning about that.
00:46:30
And by the way, for those listening and interested in the
00:46:33
pigment guide, we will have an exhibition.
00:46:37
This is discounts that will be in the show's notes.
00:46:40
If you're interested in going into this experience of looking
00:46:45
at the world differently, but also making your own materials,
00:46:48
all of you 97 countries that listen to exhibition esters.
00:46:51
The great advantage of Sub Stack is that it's international.
00:46:55
So wherever you are, Maria's knowledge is worldwide.
00:47:00
The discount will be in the show's notes.
00:47:02
It will be in the newsletter as well, so look out for it.
00:47:06
Find out more about the guide on the link in the show's notes or
00:47:10
in our newsletter, or go to Sub Stack and look for Pigments,
00:47:14
Colors and Other Stories by Maria Castro Jimenez and stick
00:47:19
around to know Maria's book recommendation on the topic.
00:47:25
So we talked about pollution. I wanted to go over that with
00:47:30
you and now I'm really interested in asking you about
00:47:36
this whole color investigation that you're doing and this focus
00:47:42
that you have on precisely that knowing where materials come
00:47:46
from, have a have a direct relationship to them.
00:47:50
Does it lead to some sorts of ethics or good practice through
00:47:55
experiencing color the way you do?
00:48:00
I think for me that the greatest benefit is the connection with
00:48:05
nature because you go outside, you pay attention to your
00:48:11
environment. Sometimes we're in the kind of
00:48:13
lives we have. We're so busy, we're going
00:48:16
around all the time. We don't even pay attention
00:48:18
where we are. So it's like being conscious of
00:48:22
the place you are, the the nature, going outside, getting
00:48:26
some sunlight, touching the plants, touching dirt is true
00:48:29
that it's helpful. You know, it's not something
00:48:31
people say not touch grass. You know, it's the thing that is
00:48:34
said everywhere online. But it's true.
00:48:35
When when when I do this I I always feel better afterwards.
00:48:39
And I think it also kind of reframes the notion of the
00:48:46
output of the artists because again, going back to that topic
00:48:50
of quantity that is very much related, what with what you were
00:48:55
talking about, which is making your own things.
00:48:59
There's this horrible trad wife movement of making everything,
00:49:04
which is absolutely ridiculous. It's not what we're talking
00:49:07
about. But here we're talking about the
00:49:10
ethics of production and the ethics of aesthetics in some
00:49:14
ways. And I think it's really
00:49:16
interesting what you're saying because me coming from the side
00:49:20
of the market and having worked in commercial galleries and
00:49:24
knowing also that side of the the contemporary arts fields,
00:49:30
there's this idea of constant innovation and this output.
00:49:34
So there's art fairs all over the world.
00:49:36
You work with a gallery that does 12 art fairs in the year
00:49:40
that that happens. That has happened.
00:49:43
I don't know if there's nowadays, not so much, but there
00:49:45
was a moment where there's this intense participation in art
00:49:48
fairs. And if an artist is selling
00:49:50
well, the gallery is bound to ask for new works each time.
00:49:54
So how can you produce an outcome as high as that, you
00:50:00
know, when you have so much demand?
00:50:02
And that's also the thing that is interesting.
00:50:05
If you subvert things and if you think, OK, so maybe it is time
00:50:11
effective to buy your own pigments.
00:50:14
But then if you make your own pigments, aren't you also
00:50:17
reassessing what you can and should produce and also finding
00:50:23
other ways to produce in a more sensible, connected, reciprocal
00:50:31
relationship with your environment?
00:50:33
So I think it's it's a really interesting thing to really look
00:50:38
at things in a completely reversed way as you are
00:50:44
proposing. And there's also something about
00:50:49
this relationship to the color that is disconnected from that
00:50:53
experience, which is the symbolic power of color.
00:50:58
So as you were saying in the beginning, and I'm going back to
00:51:00
this idea of Philip the Second, right, she was dressed in black.
00:51:07
But immediately by obscuring the economy of color and putting
00:51:14
forth the symbology of color, then that's the relationship we
00:51:18
have with it. And I have read so many articles
00:51:22
that you've written. There was one about Adam and
00:51:25
Eve. There's so many articles that
00:51:27
you, so you revisited a lot of aspects of things, narratives,
00:51:32
historical pieces that we think we know.
00:51:35
But then you bring us into a completely new perspective
00:51:39
through your knowledge of color. So what can you say about the
00:51:44
symbolic power of color? So maybe starting from Europe
00:51:49
also our perception we have of color this allergy that we seem
00:51:54
to have to it somehow. Yes, well, one of I usually say
00:52:01
Europe is the it's the poor continent regarding to colour.
00:52:06
And this probably ties to colon colonialism, you know, because
00:52:10
historically in Europe there wasn't access to that many
00:52:15
colour sources. That's one part of it.
00:52:17
And then the other part, and I have a post about this on SAS
00:52:20
Tech. It's about Protestantism because
00:52:25
when the the church, the Catholic Church split in 2.
00:52:31
So we have the Catholics and the Protestants.
00:52:34
One of the things the Protestants rejected from the
00:52:37
church was color because the Italian Renaissance, again
00:52:41
coming back to the beginning, was very colorful and the Church
00:52:44
of the 16th century was crazy colorful.
00:52:47
You have all these the bishops wearing these Reds and these
00:52:50
purples and everything was gold. You know that because color was
00:52:54
a way to show wealth again. So they rejected color as
00:52:58
because for them color was the Catholic Church and it was the
00:53:02
Pope. The result of this is that we
00:53:06
have all these these new Protestant societies where they
00:53:13
the preferred color for clothing and for design was black, white
00:53:19
and Gray. And suddenly from the 16th
00:53:22
century onwards, we have a scientist that they're colorless
00:53:26
in general. If you see the portraits of this
00:53:29
time, if you see Luther, you know he always wore black.
00:53:34
He was very, he was, everything was monochromatic.
00:53:37
And then we have the next step in this process is the
00:53:41
industrial revolution happened in Protestant countries.
00:53:45
So all the production of goods, of clothing, of cars, of
00:53:51
housing, everything started in Protestant societies where they
00:53:56
already had a philosophy of kind of colorless design.
00:54:03
So the result is that today, like when you see people wearing
00:54:08
suits, when you see people trying to dress up is everything
00:54:13
is in black and white because that was that's the norm.
00:54:17
And an interior design is always white and light colors.
00:54:22
And we have IKEA, you know, that made everything white.
00:54:25
Protestant countries as well. So there's this aesthetic that
00:54:31
is connected to originally a religious ideology.
00:54:34
People don't know that anymore, but it was so influential that
00:54:38
4-5 hundred years later western aesthetics is comes from the
00:54:46
Protestant societies and industrial processes in these
00:54:49
countries. I find it very difficult to
00:54:52
these absolutes regarding color and we go back to the to the
00:54:55
symbols of color. So for example, the the white
00:55:00
and the blue, which is aristocratic.
00:55:02
So do you have a sense of the importance of the symbology of
00:55:08
color and the whether it's universal or not?
00:55:15
No, because now we connect. OK, OK, it's.
00:55:17
Not universal. OK 2 examples.
00:55:21
You mentioned blue being royal. That's a process started by the
00:55:27
French in the Middle Ages because blue was it became at
00:55:34
some point the color of the Virgin Mary.
00:55:37
So that's why blue in clothing and in some ways, you know,
00:55:44
these Disney characters were in blue, blue dress, the innocence,
00:55:50
the purity connected to to Mary in in religion.
00:55:57
Then it became more popular in the monarchy so that in
00:56:02
heraldry, the the French monarchs started to use blue as
00:56:07
their color at the end of the Middle Ages.
00:56:10
So now we have a connection between blue and and Royals.
00:56:15
But it wasn't always like that. In Southern Europe, blue was not
00:56:20
a relevant color. The Romans didn't like it
00:56:23
because they thought it was color of the, of the Barbarians
00:56:28
of the north, because in northern Europe, the, the tribes
00:56:34
of, you know, Germany or the current day UK, they paint
00:56:39
themselves in blue. They use body paint in blue.
00:56:43
And, and, and Julius Caesar writes in, in, in all these
00:56:48
battles, he was always narrating about his own glory.
00:56:52
You know that these these people from the north are painted in
00:56:56
blue and they explained that they painted themselves the body
00:57:00
painting blue. So the romance didn't really
00:57:04
blue was not important for them, for their culture.
00:57:06
They were all about red and blue was something of the Barbarians
00:57:10
of the north. And it didn't become more
00:57:13
prominent until the end of the Roman Empire.
00:57:15
So it wasn't an important color in antiquity in Southern Europe.
00:57:20
Maybe, maybe it was in, you know, in Asia and other parts,
00:57:23
because in India they have, they had indigo for a long time and,
00:57:27
and they used it. But in Europe it wasn't, it
00:57:29
wasn't that relevant, especially in the South.
00:57:32
So until this process of the Middle Ages and about the
00:57:36
connection with the French monarchy and heraldry and the
00:57:39
Virgin Mary Lou was not very relevant in in the European
00:57:44
societies. So it depends on politics,
00:57:48
religious ideology, natural sources.
00:57:52
It depends on a lot of things. I would say the only color that
00:57:56
is probably a universal is red. I think it's probably the only
00:58:02
one that you could say it's universally felt and it's very
00:58:07
important in every culture. It's usually connected to power.
00:58:12
It's connected to war because to violence, to the gods of war,
00:58:18
probably because of blood. It's connected to life and death
00:58:21
because of blood and because everyone has red blood, no
00:58:24
matter where you live or the color of your skin, that's a
00:58:27
very universal thing. And because color is the first
00:58:31
pigment used by humanity since three, 400 years ago, that's
00:58:38
a long time since before the Homo sapiens.
00:58:42
So in every prehistoric culture, you're going to find red ochre,
00:58:47
You're going to find red in burials, burials, if you said
00:58:51
before on the bones, clothing, you're going to find it in
00:58:55
paintings. So this I think red somehow is
00:59:01
connected to our cognition in a more universal way and to our
00:59:05
blood. But all the other colours have
00:59:08
symbolic meanings. It depends on the culture.
00:59:10
For example, yellow was very important in China, was the
00:59:14
colour of the emperor in Europe. Yellow was a cheap terrible
00:59:18
colour connected to sickness and to prostitutes in some cases in
00:59:23
the Middle Ages, and to being on the margins of society.
00:59:28
So it was the opposite of yellow in China.
00:59:33
And one last question, So we have this idea, right, that it
00:59:38
is universally perceived when you see a rainbow that there are
00:59:42
seven colors. Is it that universal?
00:59:48
Does everyone have the same colors?
00:59:50
Do all cultures have the same amount?
00:59:53
Well, that that basic spectrum of colors that we teach our kids
00:59:58
when, you know, when they're speak, learning how to speak.
01:00:02
No, because some in some cultures they don't even have
01:00:06
language for certain colors. So if they don't have language
01:00:10
for them, it's not symbolically relevant in their own cultural
01:00:15
expressions. I was reading the other day that
01:00:19
until very recently the Japanese language didn't have a different
01:00:23
term for green and blue. They didn't make a distinction
01:00:27
in language. It doesn't mean they don't see
01:00:29
their different shades, but in language they someone explained
01:00:33
to me the other day they had a name for their warm colors like
01:00:37
red, yellows, orange. And they have a name for the
01:00:40
cold colors, green, Blues and violets.
01:00:45
So that was the only distinction they had in language.
01:00:47
And even today in the West is very funny.
01:00:51
But because we don't see it, we see a different way.
01:00:53
But they have a the the traffic lights, the green lights, they
01:00:57
call it blue. So this they have a very
01:00:59
different relationship with green and blue and the language
01:01:03
used to describe colors than we do.
01:01:07
Again, the industrial revolution made possible to create a lot of
01:01:12
sympathetic colors. And for example, colors like
01:01:15
pink or brown or orange were not didn't really exist in previous
01:01:21
societies. It was maybe orange and pink
01:01:24
were a different way to see red, but they're not.
01:01:27
They wouldn't have a a different category to say, oh, but this is
01:01:31
red and this is pink. No, it was a light red.
01:01:33
They wouldn't make a difference. So now we can make a lot more
01:01:40
colors than previously. And before making all these
01:01:44
different colors and having fixed colors and being able to
01:01:47
produce always the same shade, people didn't see.
01:01:51
It's not that you couldn't see, of course they saw.
01:01:53
But language has is hugely important in how you perceive
01:01:59
the world. If it's not categorized in your
01:02:02
own language, you are not going to perceive it the same way.
01:02:04
Even though you see it, it's not going to be separated.
01:02:08
In your mind, green and blue are going to be the same colour you
01:02:11
see. They're different shades, but
01:02:12
you put them together because that what you learned in your
01:02:17
language. So it depends on a lot of
01:02:21
different factors. I would be curious to know if in
01:02:25
rich in richly colored cultures like India they have had like a
01:02:32
very specific colour language earlier than us maybe?
01:02:36
Maybe someone who's listening can chime in.
01:02:39
I hope so. You can leave comments on
01:02:40
Spotify, YouTube, reply to our newsletter, go on Sub Stack,
01:02:46
reach out to Maria. Maria Sub Stack is like the most
01:02:50
popular Sub Stack ever. And everyone chimes in.
01:02:54
Do you have like a sort of a top comment or top tip that you got
01:02:57
from someone who you know surprised you or who had a
01:03:05
strange reaction? I've noticed people are very
01:03:08
interested in this topic. I, I mean, I thought it was
01:03:11
very, I was like the old one out, you know, because I was so
01:03:14
into this. But when I post about these
01:03:17
people, as you say, they really response like they are
01:03:21
interested and they want to know more.
01:03:23
I think they have a little bit the same experience I have with
01:03:26
the same first conversation, like, Oh my gosh, I didn't know
01:03:29
about this. How is how is it possible?
01:03:31
There's this whole world I don't know anything about and then
01:03:35
people are very, I think the most popular things I have
01:03:38
posted are always about blue and about blue pigments.
01:03:42
So my most popular, yes, my most popular post, it was the IT was
01:03:47
the blue pigments, 3 historical blue pigments.
01:03:50
It was about Egyptian blue, hum blue in China and Maya blue.
01:03:56
And that was crazily successful. I got a lot of subscription from
01:04:01
this post and comments and then every time I post a note about
01:04:06
lapis lazuli or the use of blue in in modern painting, like
01:04:11
people get completely crazy about that.
01:04:14
I'm not sure why, but I think blue is a favorite color for a
01:04:18
lot of people and it's also the most difficult color to make in
01:04:23
nature and the most hard to create.
01:04:27
That's why it wasn't important in Europe for a long time,
01:04:30
because there were that many sources of blue.
01:04:33
In the Renaissance it was hugely important, the blue.
01:04:36
Yes, but that was the moment when Ultramarine, that is, the
01:04:40
blue made with La Pis Lazuli, started to be very popular.
01:04:45
From colonialism. Yeah, and it came from
01:04:47
Afghanistan because of the biggest La Pis Lazuli mines in
01:04:51
the world in Afghanistan. So because of the Silk Road and,
01:04:55
and the new traveling routes and, and exploration, a lot more
01:05:02
of these colorants started to make their way into Europe.
01:05:06
Yeah. In the 15th century.
01:05:08
So the Italian Renaissance took advantage of that fully.
01:05:12
And especially in Venice, because that, that was the main
01:05:15
port in Europe. And all the, the, the things
01:05:18
from the, they got all the goods.
01:05:20
And that's where you will find the most ultramarine blue
01:05:24
anywhere in Europe was in the in the Venice paintings, in the
01:05:29
painters, yeah. Last thing, do you have, I know
01:05:34
you have a book that is really important to you.
01:05:36
Do you want to talk about it a little bit, say the author, the
01:05:40
title? Yes.
01:05:41
Do you have it with you? I have it here.
01:05:43
I don't know if you can see it well.
01:05:45
For those who can't see it, says Michelle Pasteau, the title is
01:05:50
Blue, the History of a Color. And indeed it has a religious
01:05:56
painting with the Virgin Mary at the center, holding the baby and
01:05:59
a lot of golds. Blue and golds.
01:06:01
Yes, it's from the Middle Ages. This book is part of our
01:06:06
collection of, I think there are 7 now.
01:06:11
Each volume is the is dedicated to one color.
01:06:14
So this is the history of the blue color in Western Europe.
01:06:18
I have to say it's not the whole world that will be possible.
01:06:21
And then there's red, black, white, yellow, green, and pink,
01:06:27
and I have all of them. This is the first one I got.
01:06:30
That's why I showed this one, because it was very important
01:06:36
for my interesting color and my research.
01:06:39
I had no idea there were books dedicated to one color and then
01:06:44
you could cover the whole history of a place just for one
01:06:48
color. And I don't think there isn't
01:06:50
anything like this, to be honest.
01:06:51
I think it's very unique. Huge recommendation for me.
01:06:56
And this, this the first one I read and I was like, I really
01:07:01
enjoyed it. And I was like, oh, this is
01:07:02
fascinating. And I buy everything from him.
01:07:06
And I think it's very unique because I, I haven't found
01:07:10
anything nearly close to this kind of research and work.
01:07:16
And I think it's worth it to, to read.
01:07:20
And you can find it in French. This is the only English
01:07:23
edition, I think. Now there's some translation
01:07:25
into Spanish as well. But if you read French, you're
01:07:28
sad because you have all the books and they're cheaper in
01:07:31
French. This one is from Princeton Press
01:07:35
I think. And so they're all of them are
01:07:38
translated into English from Princeton Press?
01:07:40
Yes. And some of them are translated
01:07:43
into Spanish. Yes.
01:07:45
And of course, originally they were written in French, so you
01:07:48
can also find them in French. OK, so that's that's some
01:07:50
possibilities that that's already.
01:07:52
And there may be more languages, I'm not sure I know about those
01:07:55
three. There might be others, maybe
01:07:58
German, I don't know. And I really, if you're
01:08:02
interested in in the symbolic and historical aspect of color,
01:08:06
I think this is the best thing you can, you can.
01:08:09
Read. But I'm surprised because I
01:08:10
thought that was not your interest.
01:08:12
So tell me more. It is.
01:08:16
I mean, I am interested in anything and everything, as you
01:08:19
know. It's like I cannot choose.
01:08:22
I, I think I got more into archaeology and prehistory later
01:08:26
on, but at the beginning it was more the history of colors in
01:08:30
general. And this is more of his of a
01:08:34
historical book. It's not.
01:08:36
He explains the symbols and what it means and why and the
01:08:40
language and everything is not go.
01:08:42
He doesn't go into recipes or the material aspect of color,
01:08:46
not as much, but he, he just knows so much.
01:08:52
I don't think there's, there's no one who has all this
01:08:54
knowledge in, in, in their head, I think.
01:08:58
And he goes to the original sources in French, Italian,
01:09:04
English and German, I think. So he has the, the original
01:09:08
information, you know, the, the original documents from the
01:09:11
Middle Ages and in Latin and things like that.
01:09:13
So I find that there is a very good source and a reliable one,
01:09:19
because that's a thing that that I worry about in, in research.
01:09:23
And I think it's very difficult to assess nowadays online with
01:09:28
AI. And sometimes you don't know if
01:09:31
what you're reading is true or where it comes from or how that
01:09:35
information was compiled. So if you have these kind of
01:09:40
sources that you respect and you know that if, if there is real
01:09:43
research behind the kind of work, I think it's very valuable
01:09:47
in the information landscape of the present.
01:09:50
So that's another thing that I like.
01:09:51
Like if something comes from from him, particularly from this
01:09:56
researcher, I I believe it because I know there's real work
01:10:02
behind it. Did you know, I did not expect
01:10:05
that AI was going to be a weapon in the fight against ageism?
01:10:12
Because now if you see that a researcher is about 80 or 70
01:10:16
years old, you can trust all the previous material because you
01:10:21
know, it was not written by AI. So from 2015 to, you know, until
01:10:27
2015, you still know that at least there's some, maybe it's
01:10:30
dogmatic, Maybe you know, it's, it's biased, as most theory is
01:10:36
anyway. But at least you know it is
01:10:39
authored. It's that person's work.
01:10:42
That is a surprising outcome. Yes, and he went to an archive
01:10:45
and learned, you know, he read codecs from the 7th century or
01:10:52
something. Like I did read the books.
01:10:54
Exactly. Yes, he explains everything at
01:10:57
the beginning. Like this is where I get my
01:10:59
information and wow, you know, wow, I like that because it's
01:11:04
OK, I trust. This.
01:11:05
Yes, yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
01:11:07
I'm all for that. I'm all for locating.
01:11:09
Locating, locating and contextualizing is really
01:11:12
important. Thank you so much for making
01:11:14
yourself available in a really, really busy time.
01:11:17
So thanks, this was really, really enjoyable.
01:11:20
I hope you come back to the podcasts.
01:11:22
We have to do something about prehistory.
01:11:25
I would love that. Thank you for having me.
01:11:27
It was very fun. It was this talking about color
01:11:30
is always fun for me. So this doesn't it really feel
01:11:34
like work. And I would love to do an
01:11:37
episode about prehistory because I think there's a lot of
01:11:40
misinformation and prejudice about that time as well.
01:11:43
So it's interesting to uncover. Agreed.
01:11:47
Agreed. Agreed.
01:11:48
Agreed. OK, So, you know, Maria's coming
01:11:50
back and we're gonna do a special on prehistory.
01:11:54
So this is a promise. It is coming this episode at
01:11:56
some point. And yeah, thanks so much for
01:11:58
being here. Was a real pleasure.
01:12:00
Thank you. Thank you so much for listening,
01:12:02
Thank you for watching. Until next time in two weeks,
01:12:06
take care, have fun, have a great time despite everything
01:12:09
that's going on around the world.
01:12:11
And do go visit exhibitions, look at art, because whether
01:12:16
you're happy, whether you're sad, it is always there for you
01:12:19
to carry your emotions or to take them somewhere else.
01:12:24
Exhibition Nestus is an independent podcast created and
01:12:27
hosted by me, Joanna Pierre Nevers.
01:12:30
Because we're all both actors and spectators of art and life.
01:12:35
If you're new here, you have a whole catalog of episodes to
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enjoy. Discover them at your own pace.