{"id":149283,"date":"2020-11-24T09:00:59","date_gmt":"2020-11-24T14:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=149283"},"modified":"2020-11-24T11:12:58","modified_gmt":"2020-11-24T16:12:58","slug":"verdigris-the-color-of-oxidation-statues-and-impermanence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/11\/24\/verdigris-the-color-of-oxidation-statues-and-impermanence\/","title":{"rendered":"Verdigris: The Color of Oxidation, Statues, and Impermanence"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Palais Paar, Vienna, Austria, ca. 1765\u201372 (Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art)<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s hard to imagine now, but people once gathered together freely, shoulders rubbing against shoulders, breath exchanged between lungs, bodies open to one another\u2014all this closeness, almost a million people standing in a crowd just to watch a statue get undressed.<\/p>\n

It was a rainy October day in 1886 and the Statue of Liberty was shrouded in a French flag. The weather was miserable and the ceremonial unveiling went poorly. The drapery was pulled off too soon (right in the middle of a speech), and the fireworks display had to be canceled and rescheduled. Still, over a million freezing New Yorkers came out (including a boat full of suffragettes, protesting the statue). While it\u2019s hard for me to even imagine standing inside a crowd of that size, it\u2019s harder still to imagine the Statue of Liberty herself, as she looked then. Before she was the verdigris icon, patron saint of many a bespoke paint color, she was copper-skinned. Brown, not green.<\/p>\n

It felt like a revelation to read that tiny detail in Ian Frazier\u2019s New Yorker<\/em> piece on Statue of Liberty green. When residents first beheld Lady Liberty, they saw not an otherworldly, aqua-skinned allegory holding her lit torch to the sky, but a metallic, regal woman stretching upward from a granite plinth. It\u2019s a simple enough fact, and yet I have trouble wrapping my head around it. Brown, not green.<\/p>\n

She was brown because that\u2019s the color of copper, an interesting chemical metal that occurs in a usable form frequently in nature. She is green because that\u2019s the color of verdigris, a substance that both is and isn\u2019t turquoise. She\u2019s green because we live surrounded by oxygen and when oxygen comes into contact with a metal like copper, it begins to tear away the electrons, which allows for the copper atoms to begin reacting with other particles. On the coast, uncoated metal can come face-to-face with harsh seawater, a substance that is naturally full of salt\u2014ions and carbonic acid. Thus, the Lady\u2019s metal skin gains a thin, colorful coating made of copper chloride. This crystalline solid appears to the human eye as a light robin\u2019s-egg blue, a turquoise patina, a soft hue somewhere between green and blue.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Statue of Liberty, Annie Spratt, Wikimedia Commons<\/p><\/div>\n

Next to the shifting and dated definition of millennial pink, the green-blue spectrum is perhaps my favorite color quandary. It\u2019s a surprisingly loaded issue: where one ends and the other begins, and what to call the colors in between. For centuries, there was a myth circulating in white culture that the more words we had for colors, the more colors we could see. Since some cultures don\u2019t have separate words for green and blue, some historians believed that the people who spoke those languages couldn\u2019t see the difference, that their visual skills were lesser-than, that their abilities were less evolved than the cultures that named these leaves green, that pool blue. According to this logic, English speakers were superior because of our words for green and blue\u2014not to mention our words for all those shades that exist in the gradient between them.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Edgar Degas, The Singer in Green<\/em>, 1884<\/p><\/div>\n

This is most likely not the case. People\u2019s eyes work mostly the same around the world (save for notable exceptions, such as those who are visually impaired or color blind). The fact that we\u2019re living in an increasingly color-literate world doesn\u2019t mean we\u2019re changing how we see. But we are changing how we look.<\/p>\n

Since I became interested in colors a few years ago, I began amassing a mental collection of in-betweens. Colors that didn\u2019t fall into a clear category. Colors that I felt were misnamed or misunderstood. The majority of them fell into the same bucket as so-called copper green. In here, I threw aqua, cyan, turquoise, teal, and Tiffany. I filed away glaucous and Cambridge Blue. None of them are really blue and none of them are really green. I suppose they\u2019re all shades of turquoise, yet that seems wrong, too. Turquoise is a relatively new name. Before there was turquoise, there was verdigris.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Eggs of British birds, Seebohm, 1986<\/p><\/div>\n

Verdigris is the ur-turquoise. The name comes an Old French term, vert-de-Gr\u00e8ce<\/em> (\u201cgreen of Greece<\/a>\u201d). It is also sometimes known as \u201ccopper green\u201d or \u201cearth green,\u201d since the pigment was commonly made from ground-up malachite or oxidized copper deposits. Certainly, verdigris owes a great debt to copper (symbol: Cu), as do the gemstones turquoise (chemical composition: CuAl6<\/sub>(PO4<\/sub>)4<\/sub>(OH)8<\/sub>\u00b74H2<\/sub>O) and malachite (chemical composition: Cu2<\/sub>CO3<\/sub>(OH)2<\/sub>). In America, we\u2019re more likely to call these green-blue shades turquoise (from the Old French for Turkish, or \u201cfrom-Turkey\u201d) or Tiffany Blue (coined in 1845 with the publication of the Tiffany\u2019s Blue Book <\/em>catalogue and trademarked in 1998) than we are to invoke old-timey verdigris. Yet I prefer the odd old name, with its vivid consonants and slithery tail. The word sounds unstable, fittingly fluid for such a liquid hue.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Image from Jacob Christian Sch\u00e4ffer’s Entwurf einer allgemeinen Farbenverein, 1769<\/p><\/div>\n

For many hundreds of years, verdigris was the most brilliant green readily available to painters. In the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance, artists commonly manufactured verdigris by hanging copper plates over boiling vinegar and collecting the crust that formed on the metal. This was mixed with binding agents, like egg white or linseed oil, and applied to canvas, paper, or wood. While not all of these famous works have been chemically analyzed, verdigris can reportedly be seen<\/a> in paintings by the likes of Botticelli, Bosch, Bellini, and El Greco. But like Lady Liberty, who started as brown and lightened to green, many of these works have morphed over the years, their bright hues fading from saturated cyan or emerald (depending on how the color was mixed) to murky grays and pond-water browns. For verdigris is both toxic and unstable, a fact that Leonardo da Vinci knew, though he persisted in using it still. (\u201cVerdigris with aloes, or gall or turmeric makes a fine green and so it does with saffron or burnt orpiment; but I doubt whether in a short time they will not turn black,\u201d he wrote.) It was just such a beautiful color, and so accessible. It was hard for painters to resist<\/a>, even when they knew it would render their works mortal. To use verdigris was to accept that your lovingly rendered scene would one day sour. The bright cloaks would turn dark, the soft grass would fade, the foliage turn. But such is the nature of cloth and plants and paint. Such is the nature of beauty.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Jan van Eyck, Portrait of Margaret van Eyck, 1439<\/p><\/div>\n

Of course, it is possible to restore a painting. Sometimes, when a painting is restored, the conservationists use synthetic pigment to retouch areas where the color has faded or changed. This was the case with Jan van Eyck\u2019s Margaret, the Artist\u2019s Wife<\/em>, which hangs in the National Gallery in London. \u201c<\/em>Following cleaning the small losses and areas of damage needed to be retouched so that they do not distract from the compelling image and from Van Eyck\u2019s immaculate painting technique,\u201d writes Jill Dunkerton<\/a> in her report on the process. \u201cThe materials used for the new restoration have to be stable, not changing colour like the old varnish and retouchings, and they must remain easily resoluble so that the painting can be safely cleaned again in the future. Carefully selected and tested modern synthetic resin paints are therefore employed.\u201d While in some cases, the restored painting can look alarmingly different<\/a> from the one we\u2019re used to seeing (like with that ghastly Ghent lamb<\/a>), Margaret doesn\u2019t. She looks nice after her spa treatment\u2014refreshed and pink. Her green accessories don\u2019t look overly bright either, nor has her headdress been ruined. The National Gallery\u2019s painstaking work paid off, and were Van Eyck around to see it, he might be quite pleased.<\/p>\n

Yet there is something uncanny about even the most well-done restoration, just as there\u2019s something strange about seeing pictures of the Statue of Liberty with her original copper coloring. Lately, I\u2019ve found myself becoming increasingly skeptical about the value of authenticity as a goal. According to the logic of our time, it is important to be \u201creal\u201d. What is real? Real is authentic, unadorned, unchanged. Often, the \u201creal\u201d meaning is the primary one. What something \u201creally\u201d means is what it meant, according to traditionalists. This argument has big implications when it\u2019s applied to things like the Bible or the Constitution. When applied to art, the stakes are much lower. But the logic still feels strange. It discourages appreciation for change, for the slow evolution of things. Lady Liberty isn\u2019t \u201creally\u201d brown. She\u2019s both brown and green and gray and a multitude of other colors. Greek temples aren\u2019t \u201creally\u201d colorful; they were once colorful<\/a> and now that\u2019s gone and maybe someday they\u2019ll be colorful again, if that\u2019s the will of the people.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Giovanni Bellini, St. Francis in Ecstasy, 1480<\/p><\/div>\n

I\u2019m guilty of insisting on primacy myself, I know. At times, I\u2019ve argued for the real<\/em> definition of a color<\/a>. But I also like how colors change, how words change, how material things age. Wood expands and contracts, copper gets weathered by the sea, and words move through cultures. What we call mauve isn\u2019t what Victorians considered mauve. Same with puce. Same with so many other hues. Verdigris is emblematic of that movement. It\u2019s a blue-green, yes. But more importantly, it\u2019s a quality. It is hard to give it a hex code because it\u2019s not flat. It\u2019s a color made from change.<\/p>\n

My recent interest in verdigris was piqued by the newfound ubiquity of Farrow & Ball colors, including the saturated teal they\u2019re calling Verdigris. You might notice that I wrote colors<\/em> there and not paints<\/em>. Farrow & Ball is a high-end paint brand that has been profiled in the New Yorker<\/em> and spoofed on SNL. It\u2019s a subtle status marker that indicates a level of refinement in one\u2019s private sphere. The paint itself isn\u2019t really everywhere; I\u2019ve seen it used in some house projects, but it\u2019s not as common as you might think. Being able to name-check a Farrow & Ball hue indicates that you\u2019re in possession of a certain level of cultural capital. It\u2019s also a funny kind of capital, because you don\u2019t have to spend money on Farrow & Ball to gain access to this rarefied sphere. A few interior designers have confessed to me that they use Benjamin Moore dupes for Farrow & Ball hues in their personal homes, since it\u2019s virtually impossible to tell the difference. The paint isn\u2019t the point\u2014it\u2019s the name that matters.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Farrow & Ball paint colors<\/p><\/div>\n

And Farrow & Ball names are very, very good. Some are whimsical and child-like (like Mole\u2019s Breath or Mouse\u2019s Back), some are charmingly old-fashioned (Lamp Room Gray or Wavet, an \u201cold Dorset term for a spider\u2019s web\u201d); a few are winter vegetables (Cabbage White, Brassica, Broccoli Brown), a few are obviously fancy (Manor House Gray, Mahogany), and many are simply obscure (Incarnadine, Dutch Orange, and Verdigris). Reading through the list reminds me of when I was a child, browsing J. Crew catalogues for overpriced sweaters, wondering what kind of woman would wear a \u201charvest grape\u201d cashmere shell or a \u201cdusty cobblestone\u201d merino turtleneck. It has the same preppy, old money allure. A person who would paint their bedroom Brinjal (\u201ca sophisticated aubergine\u201d) probably spent their childhood in a house with a drawing room, summering in some coastal region I\u2019ve never heard of, and capering about in child-size loafers. They\u2019re a competent sailor. They have never applied for Obamacare.<\/p>\n

Plenty of paint companies have hues named for the color of salt-water-aged metal, including Donald Kaufman\u2019s \u201cLiberty Green<\/a>,\u201d Benjamin Moore\u2019s \u201cLady Liberty<\/a>,\u201d Sherwin-Williams\u2019s \u201cParisian Patina<\/a>,\u201d and Behr\u2019s \u201cCopper Patina<\/a>.\u201d And while once I might have argued that one paint color is correct, I don\u2019t want to do that. Farrow & Ball\u2019s Verdigris is no less real than Behr\u2019s. It\u2019s also no more true.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric-Auguste Bartholdi, Presentation Drawing of \u201cThe Statue of Liberty Illuminating the World,\u201d 1875<\/p><\/div>\n

I like verdigris, and all these greenish, eggy blues, because it reminds me that Tiffany doesn\u2019t own turquoise. Neither do the mine owners in Colorado who are trying to brand their turquoise, nor does the silver company that bought up all the stones from a single town. You can own a stone and you can patent a color, but you can\u2019t own the word or the meaning. The minute you try, you lose something.<\/p>\n

Over a hundred years ago, the United States Army began looking into turning the Statue of Liberty back to her original copper color. \u201cAs might be expected, when the Statue of Liberty turned green people in positions of authority wondered what to do,\u201d writes Frazier. \u201cIn 1906, New York newspapers printed stories saying that the Statue was soon to be painted. The public did not like the idea.\u201d In the end, nothing was done. Change was accepted, and we let her green skin stay. And like a word moving through years, shifting its meaning, she continues to change, ever so slightly. As an architect told Frazier, verdigris is not opaque. It is \u201ccrystalline \u2026 you\u2019re looking into <\/em>it.\u201d You\u2019re seeing a century of change and molecular growth. You\u2019re seeing into the past. There\u2019s brown. There\u2019s green.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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