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

136 WHAT PAINTING IS
wherever life and substance are, there we find governing mind
or consciousness.” 15 Since “all substance is alive—even what
which we call dead,” substances must be controlled,
metempsychosed, nurtured, laid to rest and resurrected, fused
and separated. Healthy substances must be burnt to ashes,
scorified, before they can be revivified. Once we can see death in
every act of burning, then it becomes possible to see life in every
unburned object. Sulfur is alive simply because it glows yellow,
because it smells awful, and because it can be scratched. Even a
putrefying liquid is alive, because it becomes tumescent, swells,
and rises above the water. As the medieval alchemist Artephius
says, such water must contain “the body made of two bodies, sol
and luna,” and their mating is what causes the fermentation. 16
There is an exceptionally beautiful experiment that shows why
every substance is alive: the creation of a silver tree. 17 With the
right chemicals, it is possible to grow small “trees” made entirely
of silver, and when they are observed through magnifying
glasses they reveal a bewildering similarity to actual foliage.
They are like real trees, but washed and made brilliant. Their
scintillating branches and stalks sway in the water, and their
leaves gleam and flash as they catch the light. Anyone who has
seen a silver tree must forever doubt that rocks are not alive.
Can any parallel to visual art be more immediately persuasive
or far-reaching? The substance that artists move around, whether
it is clay, bronze, or oil, has to come to life, or mimic life by
shining, gleaming, catching the eye and ultimately living on its
own. As in alchemy, it is not enough merely to bring life to the
inert pigments: the painter also has to toy with death, to bring the
paint close to the point of no return in order to make it more
convincing in the end. In the alchemical phrase: it is necessary to
kill in order to create.
Alchemists and artists have a way of ruining what they make
and starting over again nearly from scratch. Just as a painter
might rub out a figure in order to make a better one, so an
alchemist might burn the contents of a vessel down to white char
in order to make a better substance out of the ruins of the old one.
“Destroy to create” and “kill the father to revive the son” are
mottoes of alchemy that apply just as well to visual art. Painting
is deeply involved in selfdestruction. Making art is also
constantly destroying art, and at times that ongoing destruction
can reach such a heartbreaking pitch that a lifetime of work is