What Painting Is: How to Think about Oil Painting ... - Victoria Vesna

104 HOW DO SUBSTANCES OCCUPY THE MIND?
violent. It is unpleasant painting, because it is so unbalanced, so
tilted in the direction of flammable sulfur—as if the hot stones of
the church would burst into fire. The result is a biting, acrid, hard
crust: a salt. The great majority of oil painting makes a truce
between the liquid and solid principles, between water and stone,
and the painting mirrors their negotiation. Here one principle has
overwhelmed the other, and the product is sterile. In other
paintings Monet swings the other way, and the solvents liquefy
everything, turning the world into a soft mist. 15 In those
paintings, the canvas tends to be a watery, with very little salty
residue. This is the problem with paint: if it is going to have a full
range of meanings, it must work between water and stone, and
not let itself dry up and burn, or evaporate into a colorless steam.
It was a consistent alchemical ambition to make an alloy of all
the seven metals: gold, silver, mercury, copper, iron, tin, and lead.
If it could be done, the amalgam would have wondrous
properties—not least because it would be a little model of the
solar system. In the Renaissance, the seven planets were the Sun,
Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The Sun
counted as a planet because it revolves in the sky just as the other
planets do; and, of course, the Earth was not a planet, but the
center of the universe. Since the planets from Uranus outward
are not visible to the eye, they were not known. Alchemy
continued this ancient tradition, which is based on common
sense, long after Copernicus and the invention of the telescope.
Because each planet corresponded to a metal (the Sun to gold,
Mercury to mercury, Moon to silver, Venus to copper, Mars to
iron, Jupiter to tin, Saturn to lead), an amalgam of the metals
would bring the universe into the laboratory. It would be a model
of perfect balance between opposites.
The Ethiopian alchemist Abtala Jurain, who also called himself
Aklila Warckadamison, “Crown of the Gold Seekers,” composed
a recipe for a substance made of all seven metals. First the
alchemist makes medallions out of six of the metals, and stamps
each one with its symbol. (Mercury is excepted.) Then they are