{"id":127467,"date":"2018-07-12T11:00:37","date_gmt":"2018-07-12T15:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=127467"},"modified":"2018-07-13T19:20:07","modified_gmt":"2018-07-13T23:20:07","slug":"the-harvard-color-detectives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/07\/12\/the-harvard-color-detectives\/","title":{"rendered":"The Harvard Color Detectives"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Photo: Katy Kelleher.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Inside the Arthur M. Sackler Museum at Harvard University, below a vast glass roof and above a neoclassical series of gray stone columns, hangs a fake painting. It\u2019s a Mark Rothko\u2014or, rather, a replica of a Rothko. The canvas is covered in moody indigo and vibrant crimson. It shows a square of color, patchy and imperfect. As the eye moves from left to right, there comes a moment when something changes; the colors diverge. On the right side of the piece, the colors are faded, washed pale from exposure to \u201ca very bright light,\u201d explains Narayan Khandekar, director of the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies at Harvard. On the left side, the colors are vibrant and angry. \u201cThis half,\u201d he says, waving one hand around the square of color, \u201cis an exact copy of the Rothko painting as it would have appeared to the original owners.\u201d<\/p>\n

This replica is an investigative tool, used by the art explorers at Harvard\u2019s research center to help return the Rothko to its former glory. The original work was composed of a series of large violet and vermilion squares painted on five separate canvases and often referred to as the Rothko Harvard murals. Harvard commissioned the work in the early sixties because some within the institution felt that the university \u201clacked real modern art.\u201d Rothko was honored and excited by the opportunity, and he accepted the commission with one caveat: he didn\u2019t want to be paid for the paintings. \u201cThis is the first time I have been able to deliver commissioned work that I am satisfied with,\u201d he said. It was also the first time his work had been displayed at Harvard, and for the former garment-district laborer, this felt like quite the coup.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 1964, the piece was hung in a private dining room on the tenth floor of the newly constructed Holyoke Center (now the Smith Campus Center) on Massachusetts Avenue across from the Harvard Yard. Unfortunately, it was placed on the wall opposite floor-to-ceiling windows. The windows had curtains, certainly, but who likes to sit in a dark room behind drapes to gaze at a painting? The curtains were opened so the diners could see Rothko\u2019s bold colors on one side and the grassy green banks of the Charles River on the other. But light bleached the once-vivid warm reds and intoxicating purples, and by 1967, visible damage had been done. Brushstrokes that were once crimson and violet had turned over time into murky blues polluted with brown and gray. In 1979, the series was removed from view entirely and placed in storage.<\/p>\n

It was Rothko\u2019s fault really. The man liked to mix his own colors. He wasn\u2019t satisfied with out-of-the-tube red or blue or purple. Instead, he mixed ultramarine with Lithol red. \u201cWe didn\u2019t know Rothko created this mixture before we started looking into sources of the fading,\u201d Khandekar says. \u201cAnd once we found the mixture he used, we didn\u2019t know what it meant.\u201d With help from colleagues at the Tate in London, Khandekar and his team discovered that Lithol red, when mixed with ultramarine blue, creates a paint that is less light stable than either of the colors on their own. Something happens on a chemical level, altering the paint\u2019s longevity. Rothko couldn\u2019t have known this would happen nor that it would happen so quickly (twenty years is a very short shelf life for a major work of art). But while previous generations of art restorers would have simply painted over the canvas with fresh blue and new red, that type of irreversible \u201ccorrection\u201d is no longer standard. Instead, the Harvard labs used their software to calculate the missing color and create a beam of light that would emit from a projection machine, overlaying a \u201cmap of color\u201d on the surface of the canvas. \u201cWe thought about using something like Google Glass,\u201d Khandekar admits. \u201cBut this worked beautifully.\u201d During the time the piece was exhibited this way, a staff member would come at four\u00a0P.M.<\/small> and turn the projectors off. For an hour, visitors could see the original \u201c(mostly) muddy blacks and grays,\u201d Louis Menard writes in The New Yorker<\/em><\/a>.<\/em> For a moment, you could see what time and light can do to beauty; you could come close to loss itself.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Mark Rothko,\u00a0Panel One<\/em>, Panel Two<\/em>,\u00a0Panel Three<\/em>, 1962, triptych.<\/p><\/div>\n

This is the value of the Harvard pigment library. It\u2019s a space where science and art converge. Each of the pigments, dyes, stones, minerals, and materials stored in these cabinets can be used as a reference tool to help restore and protect great works of art. In her book on the Harvard Fogg Museum, the research curator Francesca Brewer calls the museum a \u201claboratory for the fine arts.\u201d With the help of these rainbow-bright samples, scientists are able to ward off color loss. They can restore faded pieces through identifying what chemical response caused the fading in the first place. They can also reconstruct stories of paintings and people through an examination of the minerals they used to create their colors and the binding materials they sourced from nature. The color library is a working laboratory, one that traces the history of color from ancient stones to twenty-first-century nanotubes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we\u2019re looking at a piece of art, we need to be able to understand the choices that were being made, and in order to understand how the pigments were being used, we need standards,\u201d Khandekar explains. \u201cWhen you see an artist\u2019s paint box, you\u2019re looking at her thinking.\u201d Here, behind glass-fronted cabinets that face outward toward the sunny atrium, Harvard has collected thousands of color samples, and each one offers a little bit of insight into the history of art, color, and creation. Khandekar is both a scientist and an artist (he likes to paint street scenes in his spare time). On the day we meet, he is impeccably dressed in a blue suit. His hair is the type that never seems to fall out of place, and he wears a pair of round wire-rimmed glasses that give him a perpetually curious expression. His deadpan, blink-and-you\u2019ll-miss-it sense of humor shows through as he walks me slowly through the color collection.<\/p>\n

Some of these colors are familiar to me, but most of them are not. Down a long hallway, Khandekar has created a display inspired by the color wheel. As you progress from one end to the other, you move from red to yellow to blue to black. On the bottom shelves, Khandekar has placed the raw materials from which the pigments are derived\u2014ragged pieces of lapis lazuli, a sphere of dirt-brown Indian yellow, chunks of silica, shards of hematite, and a messy wad of dragon\u2019s-blood gum<\/a> (made from the sanguine sap of rattan palms, this bloody maroon was a popular paint during the Middle Ages). One of the most striking things about the Harvard color library is the sharp contrast between the refined pigments and paints and their raw forms\u2014it\u2019s hard to believe that these brilliant, clear colors ever came from stones, saps, twigs, and leaves. Scattered throughout are highlights of the collection, which was first started by the art collector Edward Waldo Forbes (grandson of Ralph Waldo Emerson) in the late nineteenth\u00a0century and grows yearly as new pigments are added to the store. Here, we see John Singer Sargent\u2019s paint box; there, we find a centuries-old bladder of paint, paired with ivory pins that were once used to prick holes in the leather so the artist could squeeze daubs out onto their palette.<\/p>\n

I love these items because they are beautiful. I am simple like that\u2014easily dazzled by rainbows and swayed by trends. I hadn\u2019t realized how lovely mauve could look on its own nor how much my eyes craved a bevy of blues. I could stare all day at viridian, vernalis<\/em>, and terre verte, mesmerized by the copper emeralds and mineral greens. But Khandekar prizes these samples for a more practical reason. For him, each item in the pigment collection is an important scientific tool. An old batch of verdigris or Prussian blue could unlock the mysteries of a painting or the secrets of a fresco. Toward the end of the interview, I ask Khandekar how much the collection is worth. None of my questions, even the dumb ones, have elicited even an eyebrow raise from him, but this one is different. \u201cI have no idea,\u201d he says. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

With the help of these pigments, Harvard scientists have restored real Rothkos and uncovered fake Pollocks. In 2002, a New York filmmaker named Alex Matter claimed to have found thirty-two Pollocks in his late parents\u2019 Long Island boiler room (located not far from where Pollock died in a car accident in 1956). Ellen Landau, an art historian who specializes in Pollock pieces, authenticated the works in 2005. Unfortunately, while the images looked<\/em> just like Pollock\u2019s pieces, they failed their chemistry exam. According to Harvard researchers, the paintings in question contained red paint that had \u201conly been marketed for a few decades\u201d and a brown paint that was developed in the early eighties. The binding medium used to create silver paint on one of the pieces was \u201cin all likelihood not commercially available until the 1970s,\u201d a report released to Reuters reads. While the Harvard study doesn\u2019t come right out and say the paintings were bullshit, it does assert, \u201cSome pigments raised questions about the proposed date of creation.\u201d I am not fluent in cautious scientist speak, but I believe this translates to: \u201cNice try, Mr. Matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

While I practically salivate upon hearing stories of grifters and frauds (particularly now that we\u2019re entering the Summer of Scam<\/a>), Khandekar prefers to focus on how the pigments can help shine light on previously understudied works, like Aboriginal bark paintings. \u201cI grew up in Australia, and I love these things,\u201d he says. \u201cNobody had given them their due.\u201d Several years ago, he proposed a project that would take him home to Australia, into the outback, where he could collect samples of ocher. (In Australia, all pigment that comes from the earth is termed ocher<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

The project is ongoing, but Khandekar has already been able to debunk a few myths. \u201cThere had been a narrative constructed, without being proven, that bark paintings were used solely as a temporary shelter. They were painted, but there was no attempt to create longevity.\u201d This turned out to be false\u2014at least in some instances. In bark paintings from the late nineteenth\u00a0century, Khandekar found that Aboriginal artists had used orchid juice to bind their pigments. This, he says, suggests the painted bark had more than practical value. \u201cThe museum was very supportive,\u201d he says. \u201cIt felt gratifying to fill a gap in art history.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Although Khandekar didn\u2019t work on this project directly, he relays the story of Indian yellow, a pigment that was introduced to India in the fifteenth\u00a0century and brought to Europe in the eighteenth\u00a0century. According to legend, this vivid yellow paint was made from the urine of cattle that had been fed a strict diet of mango leaves and water, nothing else. As a result, the cows expelled some very highly saturated urine of a remarkable hue\u2014their pee was the sunny yellow of mango flesh. They urinated on the sand, and the paint makers would collect these dirty yellow balls and knead them until they formed orbs of yellow pigment, like the one on display at Harvard. In the early aughts, the writer Victoria Finlay investigated this claim for her book Color: A Natural History of the Palette<\/em>. She found little evidence that the paint was made from urine, and concluded that the whole story was likely a myth. \u201cBut recently, SUNY<\/small> Buffalo researchers tested a sample of Indian yellow and found that it contained animal metabolites and plant metabolites,\u201d Khandekar says. \u201cIt looks like that story wasn\u2019t as far-fetched as it sounds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before I leave the pigment library, I ask Khandekar if there are any other myths he wants to debunk or any stories he wants to make sure I tell. We had talked about brown paint made from mummy bones and blue paint made from poisonous chemicals, but I knew there were more stories to tell. Yet the one thing Khandekar wants me to make clear to readers is this: \u201cWe\u2019re not open to the public,\u201d he says with a warm smile. \u201cThis isn\u2019t storage, and it\u2019s not on public display. I would love to have everyone be able to enjoy them, but then we wouldn\u2019t be able to do our work. And this is our work.\u201d And with that, he goes back to his desk, ready, I imagine, to tackle another art-history mystery.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Katy Kelleher is a writer who lives in the woods of rural New England. She is the author of\u00a0<\/em>Handcrafted Maine. Kelleher writes the column Hue\u2019s Hue<\/a>, each installment of which reveals the history of a color.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Inside the Arthur M. Sackler Museum at Harvard University, below a vast glass roof and above a neoclassical series of gray stone columns, hangs a fake painting. It\u2019s a Mark Rothko\u2014or, rather, a replica of a Rothko. The canvas is covered in moody indigo and vibrant crimson. It shows a square of color, patchy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1397,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[35,34690,34693,34688,34687,4747,4749,34703,34691,34689,34692],"class_list":["post-127467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-art","tag-arthur-m-sackler-art-museum","tag-ellen-landau","tag-francesca-brewer","tag-harvard-fogg-museum","tag-jackson-pollock","tag-mark-rothko","tag-mural","tag-narayan-khandekar","tag-rothko-harvard-murals","tag-straus-center-for-conservation-and-technical-studies-at-harvard"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Harvard Color Detectives<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"With the help of the vast array of pigments kept in a Harvard laboratory, scientists have restored real Rothkos and uncovered fake Pollocks.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/07\/12\/the-harvard-color-detectives\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Harvard Color Detectives by Katy Kelleher\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"July 12, 2018 \u2013   Inside the Arthur M. 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