Materiality of painting.

[the_grynne]

I spent hours on the plane yesterday listening to podcasts, mostly lectures from the Big Idea series and the Backdoor Broadcasting Company. Some were awful (not naming any names), but my favourite was Philip Ball on Chemistry and Color in Art. I like discussions of art history, but I particularly love it when the materiality of the artwork becomes

Comments

[orange_crushed]

I very much recommend Ball's book, and if you find yourself interested in more nuts-and-bolts details of painterly life, there's also "The Renaissance Artist at Work" by Bruce Cole. The latter is an unattractive book with terrible illustrations, but thorough and insightful scholarship.

You've hit on one of my big interests, of course. :) I tend to specialize in prints, which is so process-based. Hercules Seghers, one of the most innovative etchers of all time (a precursor and inspiration to Rembrandt) was the son of a cloth merchant. He had access to dyes and chemicals, and ended up producing startlingly different work- color paper and ink, new textures (running cloth through the press)- that no other artist was close to developing at the time. He basically invented the aquatint before its formal "invention." It's fascinating to think of the limitations and possibilities of materials. And it's absolutely essential to good art history.

Sounds like you're having fun already. :D

[the_grynne]

This lecture also reminded me of the changing view of the artist in society. From a more economic point of view, the modern reification of the artist as creator interests me - how art has become more and more divorced from craft.