A history of color….black
“I’ve been 40 years discovering that the queen of all colors was black.”
I recently started reading a book by Victoria Finlay , “Color: A Natural History of the Palette”. I have wanted to explore the history of color, but this book is a much deeper dive than I was expecting. I am very spoiled by going to an art store and buying any color I want. Of course I mix and blend those colors, but I never thought of the expertise needed to make paint from materials around you.
For example, I never thought about the effects environment had on colors used by artists in different regions. Before easy world travel, an ochre in Italy was wildly different from an ochre in Australia. Every region had different formulas using the plants, rocks and soil of their area. Even the pH of an area influenced the colors you could achieve.
I tend to think of black as a basic color, but I have learned so much. Black was the first color used by artists. You can imagine someone sitting around a fire in a cave, grabbing a burned stick and realizing that the charcoal allows them to draw on the cave wall. The earliest drawings usually include some form of charcoal. Later the Greeks and Romans used black silhouettes on all types of art, pottery and homes. The color itself has had many meanings over the years - from affluence to nobility to death to evil.
When we walk into an art store, we can see so many blacks….Ivory Black, Lamp Black, Bone Black, Iron Oxide Black. We all have a favorite black to use, but do you know how they each got their names?
Ivory Black originally came from burned scraps of ivory. It is considered one of the finest blacks by artists. Fortunately now ivory is protected, so the formula used is closer to Bone Black with finer particles. Bone Black comes from burning animal bones in an airtight container. Lamp Black originally came from lamp soot.
As for modern blacks, Anish Kapoor bought the rights to Vantablack, the blackest black. Another artist, Stuart Semple, was upset by Kapoor’s refusal to allow other artists to use Vantablack. He started a Kickstarter campaign for Black 3.0, which can be used by anyone. Who knew there was a global chess game to obtain the blackest black?
I personally like to use Carbon Black. I find it is dark enough for my uses and it makes many lovely shades of gray. Do you have a favorite black?