What Painting Is: How to Think about Oil Painting ... - Victoria Vesna
What Painting Is: How to Think about Oil Painting ... - Victoria Vesna What Painting Is: How to Think about Oil Painting ... - Victoria Vesna
WHAT PAINTING IS 99 probably stumbles over the more complex compounds. So alchemy can help answer our question about artists' substances by showing what the body knows, as opposed to what the mind memorizes. Taking mercury first, as the alchemists nearly always did: its sign is very like the sign for Venus or copper —they are both feminine and “volatile.” Mercury is apt to move around, and show a lively desire to combine with other metals. 1 It is also called quicksilver because it looks like cold liquid silver, and the alchemists thought it could dissolve gold, silver, and other metals. It is a penetrating liquid, they said: it can seep into stones and find precious metals. If a sample of powdered rock is heated with mercury, the mercury will attach itself to whatever gold there might be and draw it out. 2 Quicksilver is associated with fluids, especially semen, blood, and the humid breath: it is “primordial humidity” (humiditas radicalis). Mircea Eliade reports that Hindu alchemists call it the “semen of Shiva.” 3 For Andreas Libavius, a late sixteenth century alchemist, mercury is the “material, vaporous principle” of water itself, as if mercury were what made water wet. 4 More sober metallurgists like the medieval Marius report that mercury has “an abundance of water” in it, so that “it is very similar to cold water and ice and is readily congealed”—that is, made into amalgams. It has only a small portion of fire in it, since it does not burn easily, nor scorch the tongue like fiery substances. Its high water content, he observes, also “forces it to scatter if it is thrown into a fire.” 5 The sources paint a picture of mercury as a principle of wateriness, a kind of liquid more fundamental than water itself. It washes itself into crevices, ferrets out hidden things, melts and dissolves whatever appears solid. In painting, therefore, mercury is the very principle of the solvent—the turpentine, turpenoid, benzene, or mineral oil. Its liquidity has no limits: the more powerful the solvent, the thinner the paint layer can be. Benzene can make very thin matte layers of paint that dry almost immediately and can be put down one over another. Other volatile oils like turpentine are less strident and carry the gloss of
100 HOW DO SUBSTANCES OCCUPY THE MIND? the linseed oil with them as they spread over the canvas, forming shiny glazes instead of dull sheets. The strong solvent is also a penetrator: if the brush bears down too hard, it might begin to dissolve the dried paint underneath it. Especially in tempera, painters have to go delicately over the layers of paint that have already set, or else their solvents will begin eating into their own paintings. It is disconcertingly easy to wipe through carefully laid layers of tempera, right down to the white gesso underneath. There is no way to patch such a hole: it leaves a permanent scar in the painting. To a painter, the solvent is a kind of anti-paint, because it is what pigment must be balanced against in order to make it possible to paint at all. Like mercury, the solvent is volatile, unable to remain fixed in place, or to take on color. The principle of fluidity, liquidity, or solubility is a universal requirement in paint, and one-half of the two fundamental ingredients of paint (water and stone). Sulfur is quicksilver’s opposite, complement, and “consort.” Its masculinity is shown by its “fieriness”—its affinity to fire, smoke, and stench. Paracelsus simply called it Fire. 6 It can turn mercury into a solid, and even give it color. The result of the union of mercury and sulfur is cinnabar (HgS), whose brilliant red color is said to come from the male sulfur. The ability to color is masculine, because sulfur “impresses” itself into more flighty, changeable substances. Sulfur is also called the “balsam of nature,” since it is the “formative” power and life in substances. 7 As the giver of form (informator), sulfur is masculine, the seed par excellence. “In a certain sense,” writes Titus Burckhardt, “‘rigid’ Sulphur is theoretical understanding,” containing “the gold of the Spirit in unfruitful form.” 8 Certainly the idea that sulfur is infertile without mercury is rooted deep in the alchemical tradition, though the explicit equation between sulfur’s bodily nature and theoretical reasoning is new to this century. Considered as a principle, sulfur can be anything that does not evaporate or turn liquid, just as mercury can be whatever is volatile or easily liquefies. Ordinarily, alchemists thought raw sulfur was impure
- Page 58 and 59: WHAT PAINTING IS 49 will tell you
- Page 60 and 61: WHAT PAINTING IS 51 but a source of
- Page 62 and 63: WHAT PAINTING IS 53 be more monstro
- Page 64 and 65: WHAT PAINTING IS 55 lower one blue.
- Page 66 and 67: WHAT PAINTING IS 57 they are painte
- Page 68 and 69: WHAT PAINTING IS 59 other garden pl
- Page 70 and 71: WHAT PAINTING IS 61 FIG. 1 Oppopana
- Page 72 and 73: English mystic Robert Fludd, air is
- Page 74 and 75: WHAT PAINTING IS 65 the same as wat
- Page 76 and 77: WHAT PAINTING IS 67 alchemists saw
- Page 78 and 79: 3 The mouldy materia prima IT IS PO
- Page 80 and 81: WHAT PAINTING IS 71 repression: the
- Page 82 and 83: WHAT PAINTING IS 73 oil, canvas, sq
- Page 84 and 85: WHAT PAINTING IS 75 alchemist could
- Page 86 and 87: WHAT PAINTING IS 77 live in murky u
- Page 88 and 89: WHAT PAINTING IS 79 last, and then
- Page 90 and 91: hapsody on salt. Welling says that
- Page 92 and 93: WHAT PAINTING IS 83 mysterious ladd
- Page 94 and 95: WHAT PAINTING IS 85 FIG. 2 Noah’s
- Page 96 and 97: WHAT PAINTING IS 87 half-light and
- Page 98 and 99: WHAT PAINTING IS 89 he could make,
- Page 100 and 101: WHAT PAINTING IS 91 arm’s length
- Page 102 and 103: WHAT PAINTING IS 93 with the correc
- Page 104 and 105: WHAT PAINTING IS 95 an experienced
- Page 106 and 107: WHAT PAINTING IS 97 tunnel view thr
- Page 110 and 111: WHAT PAINTING IS 101 (an odd mistak
- Page 112 and 113: WHAT PAINTING IS 103 driest and mos
- Page 114 and 115: all put in a crucible in a darkened
- Page 116 and 117: WHAT PAINTING IS 107 It’s importa
- Page 118 and 119: WHAT PAINTING IS 109 qualities, pri
- Page 120 and 121: WHAT PAINTING IS 111 spoon as it is
- Page 122 and 123: 5 Coagulating, cohobating, macerati
- Page 124 and 125: COAGULATING, COHOBATING, MACERATING
- Page 126 and 127: COAGULATING, COHOBATING, MACERATING
- Page 128 and 129: COAGULATING, COHOBATING, MACERATING
- Page 130 and 131: COAGULATING, COHOBATING, MACERATING
- Page 132 and 133: COAGULATING, COHOBATING, MACERATING
- Page 134 and 135: COAGULATING, COHOBATING, MACERATING
- Page 136 and 137: COAGULATING, COHOBATING, MACERATING
- Page 138 and 139: COAGULATING, COHOBATING, MACERATING
- Page 140 and 141: COAGULATING, COHOBATING, MACERATING
- Page 142 and 143: COAGULATING, COHOBATING, MACERATING
- Page 144 and 145: COAGULATING, COHOBATING, MACERATING
- Page 146 and 147: COAGULATING, COHOBATING, MACERATING
- Page 148 and 149: COAGULATING, COHOBATING, MACERATING
- Page 150 and 151: THE STUDIO AS A KIND OF PSYCHOSIS 1
- Page 152 and 153: THE STUDIO AS A KIND OF PSYCHOSIS 1
- Page 154 and 155: THE STUDIO AS A KIND OF PSYCHOSIS 1
- Page 156 and 157: THE STUDIO AS A KIND OF PSYCHOSIS 1
100 HOW DO SUBSTANCES OCCUPY THE MIND?<br />
the linseed oil with them as they spread over the canvas, forming<br />
shiny glazes instead of dull sheets. The strong solvent is also a<br />
penetra<strong>to</strong>r: if the brush bears down <strong>to</strong>o hard, it might begin <strong>to</strong><br />
dissolve the dried paint underneath it. Especially in tempera,<br />
painters have <strong>to</strong> go delicately over the layers of paint that have<br />
already set, or else their solvents will begin eating in<strong>to</strong> their<br />
own paintings. It is disconcertingly easy <strong>to</strong> wipe through<br />
carefully laid layers of tempera, right down <strong>to</strong> the white gesso<br />
underneath. There is no way <strong>to</strong> patch such a hole: it leaves a<br />
permanent scar in the painting. To a painter, the solvent is a kind<br />
of anti-paint, because it is what pigment must be balanced against<br />
in order <strong>to</strong> make it possible <strong>to</strong> paint at all. Like mercury, the<br />
solvent is volatile, unable <strong>to</strong> remain fixed in place, or <strong>to</strong> take on<br />
color. The principle of fluidity, liquidity, or solubility is a<br />
universal requirement in paint, and one-half of the two<br />
fundamental ingredients of paint (water and s<strong>to</strong>ne).<br />
Sulfur is quicksilver’s opposite, complement, and “consort.” Its<br />
masculinity is shown by its “fieriness”—its affinity <strong>to</strong> fire,<br />
smoke, and stench. Paracelsus simply called it Fire. 6 It can turn<br />
mercury in<strong>to</strong> a solid, and even give it color. The result of the<br />
union of mercury and sulfur is cinnabar (HgS), whose brilliant<br />
red color is said <strong>to</strong> come from the male sulfur. The ability <strong>to</strong> color<br />
is masculine, because sulfur “impresses” itself in<strong>to</strong> more flighty,<br />
changeable substances. Sulfur is also called the “balsam of<br />
nature,” since it is the “formative” power and life in substances. 7<br />
As the giver of form (informa<strong>to</strong>r), sulfur is masculine, the seed par<br />
excellence.<br />
“In a certain sense,” writes Titus Burckhardt, “‘rigid’ Sulphur<br />
is theoretical understanding,” containing “the gold of the Spirit in<br />
unfruitful form.” 8 Certainly the idea that sulfur is infertile<br />
without mercury is rooted deep in the alchemical tradition,<br />
though the explicit equation between sulfur’s bodily nature and<br />
theoretical reasoning is new <strong>to</strong> this century. Considered as a<br />
principle, sulfur can be anything that does not evaporate or turn<br />
liquid, just as mercury can be whatever is volatile or easily<br />
liquefies. Ordinarily, alchemists thought raw sulfur was impure