Observations on Art 7.10

I'll be on the road again because the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts starts tomorrow and runs through Sunday in State College. That makes it a good time to post some of the art notes I have.

You may not realize it but color has a history almost as intriguing as the art that was created with it. For various reasons there are colors that were once wildly popular but are no longer used or outright extinct. Some are poisonous, white lead is the obvious one but green has had its share of problems. Both Scheele's Green and Paris Green were produced using arsenite compounds (arsenite is an oxidized version of arsenic). Scheele's Green may have caused the death of Napoleon as his apartment in exile was painted with the color while Paris Green was used in early insecticides.

Other colors are just lost to the ages. Mayan Blue is a sky blue color used by the Mayans which doesn't fade, ever. It was made from clay and the indigo plant but the exact preparation is lost. Tyrian Purple was made from the shell of a certain shellfish which was only found off the shore of ancient Phoenicia’s Tyre. Actually a reddish purple it was the color of royalty for centuries but was extremely expensive and disappeared along with the shellfish.

Than there are colors that are simply illegal. Indian Yellow was supposedly made from the urine of cows fed only mango leaves and water but there is no documented proof of that. Whether true or not the government of India outlawed the color in 1908 though a synthetic version is available today. Another illegal color is Mummy Brown the story of which I'll let to your imagination.

Finally there is a blue in a category all its own, Ultramarine or Sacred Blue. It was first produced in the 6^th century and is made by grinding the Lapis Lazuli semi-precious stone of Afghanistan. The paint is literally worth its weight in gold. Unlike some of the other colors I mentioned true Lapis Lazuli blue does still exists and you can purchase it yourself, for $38/gram, at the Kremer Pigmente store in New York.

A few other random thoughts ....

The rich just keep getting richer and in this case I'm not talking about dealers or collectors. Glenn Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art, was paid $1.8 million in 2011 while his rival the Metropolitan Museum of Art's President Emily Rafferty was paid $1.1 million. Nine New York City museum or performing arts organization chiefs made over $1 million that year.

For over forty years the Met has been closed on Mondays but as of July 1^st that changed and the museum is now open seven days a week. I only bring that up because there was always a joke that Monday was the Met's busiest day of the week. More tourists lined up at the Met's door on a Monday morning than on any other.

Speaking again of the Met, did you know that you can 'pay what you wish' whenever you visit? The recommended fee is $25 but as little as 1¢ will do just fine. You didn't hear that from me.

7/11 update - The greens seem to be cursed, Ash had another I hadn't thought of myself. Verdigris, actually vert-de-Grèce or the Green of Greece. It's another green that is highly toxic but was the most popular green of the Renaissance when it was made by soaking copper plates in wine. You've seen it hundreds of times without realizing it because it's made by oxidizing copper. It's the color of the Statue of Liberty.

Observations on Art 5.7

Madame Jeanne Lanvin, 1937

You might begin to wonder why a post about a fragrance gets the art heading. One reason is I have never had a fashion heading and I'm not about to start now. The other is that there is a bit of a history lesson ahead. I could even argue that fragrance is as much an art as any other just art for the sense of smell instead of sight but I'm not going to. Artists tend to agree that anything an artist calls art is in fact art but art historians get picky about it, I fall in between the two, but that's a totally different thought.

The fragrance is called Me and was created by the artistic director and head designer of Lanvin in Paris, Moroccan born Alber Elbaz. For years I've had a habit of wearing a men's cologne from Ralph Lauren so it take something special to intrigue me. In this case it was the main tone (highly technical term) which in Me comes from the zest of sparkling blueberries.

The history lesson comes in when you start to look at Lanvin itself. Founded by Madame Jeanne Lanvin in 1889 Lanvin is the oldest fashion house in Paris. Madame Lanvin was heavily influenced by art and the walls of her Paris apartment were covered with works by Edgar Degas, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Eugène Boudin, and Edouard Vuillard.

During a trip to Florence, Italy Lanvin saw a fresco by Fra Angelico, an Early Italian Renaissance painter, in which he used the shade of blue now known as quattrocento. The word quattrocento comes from the Italian word for 1400 and refers to the art and culture of 15^th century Italy. Lanvin developed her own variation of quattrocento blue, now known as Lanvin Blue, that became the signature color of her fashion house and the Coke of color. To this day Lanvin blue's formula is secret and since 1923 has only been manufactured in Lanvin's own dye factories in France.

In the review the designer Alber Elbaz describes the woman he thinks would wear his fragrance. "She is, or would like to be, a Parisian, because our house is so evocative of France's capital and because the city is so synonymous with sensuality and elegance."

Blueberries and Paris,  yes I was intrigued and maybe now you understand why.

*There is a good selection of quattrocento art work on The Metropolitan Museum of Art's art history timeline. Also the Met's Costume Institute has a large collection of vintage Lanvin designs. And some trivia, in January 2010 the French postal system, Le Post, issued limited edition Lanvin stamps.