Library Notes
Rebecca Hyde – January 26, 2010

Some people may look at a picture and call it a masterpiece; others will not call it art. There is a great deal of science underlying art. The following books bridge the gap between the two.

James Elkins was a painter and is now an art historian. In “What Painting Is,” he examines the act of painting (specifically oil painting), rather than the history of the art. In other words, what is thinking in painting as opposed to thinking about painting? The thoughts of the artist are embedded in the paint, “liquid thought.” And the process of turning the thickness of paint into a picture is like the efforts of alchemists, trying to mix and mingle ingredients to produce a purified, rare substance. Elkins examines the term “hypostasis,” the feeling that something as dead as paint might also be deeply alive and full of thought. A painted window and be brilliant with light (Matisse’s open windows), but it is also a heavy mineral deposit and absolutely opaque. Or look at the brushstrokes that remain fixed in a painting for all to see: material memories of the artist at work.

Phillip Ball in “Bright Earth: Art and the Invention of Color,” understands painterly color as a language, a language of images that takes “a short cut to our senses and our emotions.” The great debate on color covers its historical traditions, psychology, prejudices, religiosity, and mysticism. Ball enters the debate through the substance of color. He has been trained as a chemist, so paint and pigments are for him materials with appearances, smells, and textures: “Vermilion conjures up the sulfur and mercury of the alchemists.” His book is a history interweaving chemical technology and the use of color in art. The demand for color spawned the modern chemical industry: “Many of the world’s major chemical companies - BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, Ciba-Geigy – began as manufacturers of synthetic dyes.” And as in the far past, painters consorted with alchemists to procure colors. Chapters range from “Secret Recipes” and the “Old Gold” of the masters’ restricted palettes to the “Reign of Light” of Impressionism and “Capturing Color” in reproduction.

Margaret Livingstone is a neurobiologist. In her book, “Vision and Art: the Biology of Seeing,” she explores the physics of light and how that visual information is processed in the brain. She is particularly interested in how our visual systems process color and luminance (or lightness) in order for us to see illusions in art. Moving from the physics of light and the structures of the eye and brain, Livingstone then explores how the techniques of great painters and, more recently, computer technology exploit the human visual system. She makes the point that art ultimately depends on the brain. If we understand that connection then we can deepen our appreciation of both the art and the science of what we see.