Feasting on Art

Subtleties of taste, texture and tone – a simple meditation on the infinite. Made of rice and pollen meticulously mounded across the floor, Wolfgang Laib’s 2007 work, Ohne Zeit – ohne Ort – ohne Körper, acts as an ephemeral testimony to existence in its rawest forms. Amidst the grid work of rice mountains, the glowing yellow of three central pyramidal piles is strikingly potent – a concentration of hazelnut pollen.

Wolfgang Laib, Ohne Zeit – ohne Ort – ohne Körper (detail), 2007,
piles of rice, 3 piles of hazelnut pollen, 470 x 410cm, image courtesy Galerie Thaddeus Ropac

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Yellow is a colour of juxtapositions. In the natural world, animals and insects cloak their bodies (often in conjunction with the colour black) to signify poison, danger. Likewise, it is the colour of death, the sallow skin of a sick person and the brilliant autumnal yellow of leaves before they fall to the ground. The colour is derived from a number of materials including some of the most dangerous in the world, cadium sulfide, lead chromate and the pigment named orpiment made from arsenic. Orpiment, or King’s Yellow/Chinese Yellow, touches upon other connotations of the colour, power and wealth. As the colour of gold, the pigment was used to paint the halos of angels and the garments of the Hindu god Krishna. In China, yellow robes were reserved for only the Emperors to wear, hence the name King’s Yellow. As the embodiment of sunshine, yellow was most commonly derived from saffron, the stigmas of the crocus. The deep golden hue was used to stain foods and fabrics alike and is still today, the world’s most expensive spice. There are a number of food connotations with regard to the colour, hues vary from maize to mustard – popular colours in the 70′s appearing on a number of goods including bell bottoms and retro lamps – to the vibrant tones of lemon and apricot. Generally considered a happy colour, perhaps it is the sunshine-like colouration of citrus fruits that in conjunction with the bright flavour, that help to dispel the dark days of winter.

Gustavo Montoya, Still Life with Bananas
oil on canvas, 80 x 119.4cm, Private collection

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The colour orange has always been one of warning used for it’s eye-catching qualities to delineate danger. The pigment was produced through a difficult process of grinding down madder, the pink root of a small bush. Madder is often used to make ‘rose madder genuine’ watercolor paint but when used as a dye, a rich shade of orange-red will emerge when a bit of alum is added to the bath (1). The dependence on the natural madder pigment did not end until 1869 when the specific chemical that causes the red-orange coloration was replicated in a formula. Over the past 30 years there has been a small revival within the industry to relearn the techniques associated with natural dye production.

Margaret Preston, Still life: fruit (Amhem Land motif), 1941
oil on canvas, 43 x 53.3 cm, National Gallery of Australia

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Hung Liu’s artistic production is a process of recollection – a symbolic excavation.  Having weathered the re-education of artists vis-a-vis Mao’s Cultural Revolution and immigration to the U.S. in 1984, Hung Liu’s influences are richly transcultural.  She is known as one of the very first Chinese artists to study within the U.S. and has since received numerous accolades for her dynamic work.  Starting from anonymous photographs (often of unnamed Chinese prostitutes), Liu’s portrayals pair elements of tradition with contemporary critique.  Vividly, her use of colour challenges her audiences’ emotive links to colour.  In an interview she gave in 1995, Hung Liu refers to her vibrant use of colour, particularly red: “Red is an alarming color. We use red lights to warn people; to tell about danger and to use caution.  In China, red is the color of the national flag. It is also the color of revolution; it suggests blood. Red also is used for celebration; it is festive and is used for such things as weddings, the Chinese New Year, and red banners. I like to work with layers of meaning.” (1)

Hung Liu, Yang, 2008

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In the mid-16th century, Spain began importing a vibrant red pigment from the New World that was so highly sought after that the source was held as a national secret. The dye was extracted from the blood of a female cochineal, a wingless insect that lives upon the leaves of the prickly pear. The dye was so valued that in the late 18th century, a French spy by the name of Nicolas Joseph Thierry de Menonville, snuck into the Spanish territory and successively procured a living specimen. The cochineal insect is closely related to the Indo-European kermes bug. Kermes insects live upon the scarlet oak and the red dye they produce was the most expensive pigment in the middle ages and very valuable to the Romans. According to Victoria Finlay, author of Colour: travels through the paintbox, “for many cultures red is both death and life – a beautiful and terrible paradox.” The connotations this colour, often made from the blood of insects, is embodied in Claude Monet’s Still Life: Quarter of Beef. This painting of a dead animal is created – is given life – through the death of the cochineal insect; yet represents a food source that sustains life. The small canvas represents the cyclical and paradoxical nature of the colour red.

Claude Monet, Still Life: Quarter of Beef (Nature morte : le quartier de viande vers), c.1864
oil on canvas, 24 x 33 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris

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