Alex Kanevsky

Colors annotations

Green, Brown and Blue Darkness since 2005

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Green, Brown and Blue Darkness since 2005
22 photos · Updated 5 months ago
In conditions of insufficient light, perception is achromatic and ultimately, black. Carbon Black is useless
for darkness. The deepest darkness is accomplished with several layers of transparent browns and
blues, like wearing more and more sunglasses all at once. Somewhere in the middle of these layers
Rembrandt sandwiched his murky secondary objects. Velazquez darkness that surrounds his dwarves
and meninas is greenish. They seem comfortable in that darkness that looks frightening to people, used
to bright electric lights everywhere. The best darkness found at the Met is painted by Jacopo Bassano. In
Philadelphia Museum, Degas “Interior” has a rather delicate light darkness. Through no fault of its own,
the painting was also called “Rape” by some critic who was probably afraid of darkness. BBC has a
collection of silences recorded on different locations and used appropriately between the segments. Ad
Reinhardt’s dark paintings were done with turpentine and opaque pigments. They are very fragile. The
most velvety brown darkness in Philadelphia can be found on the second floor above a Greek restaurant
on 12th Street. Until a misguided improvement effort another location with an excellent true black
darkness was on Filbert Street by the Reading Terminal. I have never seen Rothko Chapel black
paintings in Houston, but it rates a trip. The truly frightening dark paintings are Goya’s Black Paintings in
Prado. In Praise of Shadows, a book by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki contains everything one needs to know on
the subject. The emotional response to darkness has generated metaphorical usages of the term in
many cultures. In Christianity, the first product of creation was light and it’s separation from darkness. In
Old English there were three words that could mean darkness: heolstor, genip, and sceadu. They meant:
a hiding place, mist and shadow. Whistler’s Nocturnes are accomplished not so much with dark colors as
with low contrast and nearly monochromatic perception. He observed the darkness at night, memorizing
the scene and then painted it in the morning. Night painting is difficult to do because it will later be seen in
light.
 Something known as flesh
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Something known as flesh
29 photos · Updated 5 months ago
Flesh. There is no such color, of course. If you paint people, you notice that they range in color from
greenish violet through almost white, to pink gray and then to warm dusty purple or sometimes greenish
rose and all the way to Van Dyke Brown with Prussian Blue shadows, and with variations of cold violet,
warm dark ochre with light bluish bloom. Not to mention pink. Many paint manufacturers optimistically
offer something called “flesh tone” that looks like a deathly ill caucasian person with food poisoning and
mood swings. Have to mix your own every time. Velazquez said that oil paint is ideally suited to painting
human flesh. Euan Uglow discovered that, although the color range of flesh on a single person is very
wide, the value interval is narrow. Matisse successfully painted a woman with a green nose. The
standard procedure was always to achieve a desired color balance by using complimentary colors for the
underpainting and the glaze over it. In this soup particles of opaque lighter pigments were suspended for
the finer modulation. Frank Auerbach often uses a kind of greenish gray as the dominant color for flesh.
But then he is English. When I travel I miss painting and I usually think of painting flesh. Elmer Bishoff
used completely random bright colors for the human flesh with astonishingly good results. Art students
are very excited when they notice for the first time that some shadows on a human model are blue and
green. Jenny Saville goes from very complicated to very simple flesh color compositions in the same
painting, which makes for a very real visceral presence. Ann Gale lets it happen depending one how
involved she becomes with any given passage. Ingres just went all smooth as if his flesh is a window into
a foggy morning. Lucian Freud’s “Benefit Supervisor “ is the most gloriously vast flesh in painting. Marble
Greek and Roman statues were originally painted flesh color.
 Red since 2005
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Red since 2005
27 photos · Updated 5 months ago
Cadmium red is expensive, toxic and opaque. Vermilion is livelier but not as strong. There are powerful
Rose Madders that will bleed through white. Transparent Red Oxide is brown. Madder Brown is red.
Permanent Madder Brown is the paint I use all the time. Red is a stimulant, it is present more than other
colors in flags, packaging and advertising. Pink is completely absent from flags. Most people prefer red
paintings to blue paintings. Some of the most beautiful transparent reds are also most fugitive. Corot
almost always included a person wearing a red hat in his forest landscapes. A bull can't tell if a muleta is
red. Red poppies often fade noticeably after a day of sun exposure. Strangely, there is no tomato red;
you have to mix Cadmium, Alizarin Crimson and sometimes Raw Umber. Alizarin Crimson mixed with
Phalo Green produces the kind of purple found in turnips. If you dye a red steak blue with food coloring, it
changes your perception of its flavor. The longest living tube of paint I have is Williamsburg’s Persian
Rose, I like it, but it will never end.
 Yellow. Reluctantly since 2005
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Yellow. Reluctantly since 2005
9 photos · Updated 5 months ago
Yellow is difficult. But it seemed easy to Van Gogh. Maybe I should spend some time in Provence. Pierre
Bonnard said that you can never have to much yellow. Yellow was one of the four colors found in Piet
Mondrian paintings. Indian yellow was originally made from cow urine but not anymore. Its powerful
tinting ability makes it very hard to control. Yellow is the color most susceptible to dramatic changes from
even smallest additions of other pigments. Naples yellow ranges from astonishingly ugly to very beautiful,
probably because nowadays it is a mix, and its composition depends on the maker’s preferences. It is
one of the oldest synthetic pigments, dating from around 1620. The actual pigment is toxic, like many
good things in life. I always have a tube of Cadmium Yellow (how could you not?) but almost never find
any use for it. Yellow is the first color to fade from the sun exposure. White paper and fabric, on the
contrary, turn yellow from exposure. Nobody uses yellow in paintings sparingly and reluctantly. It is either
with abandon as did Turner, or not at all. Matisse was not afraid of yellow, but I wouldn’t call it an
embrace. Morandi stayed safely within Naples Yellow and Yellow Ochre, only rarely venturing into insane
Cadmium Lemon Yellow excursions. Zinc Yellow used by Seurat was unstable and turned brown.
Although the leader of a stage in Tour de France gets a yellow jersey, he is not considered the winner of
the yellow jersey, only the wearer. Yellow is the first color introduced into fresh white snow as dogs are
taken out for a walk early in the morning. In Russia, a colloquial expression for an insane asylum used to
be "yellow house.” At the moment, my favorite yellow is Sennelier’s Light Yellow Ochre that also has a
wonderful german name “Gelbocker Hell”.
 Titanium White since 2005
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Titanium White since 2005
29 photos · Updated 5 months ago
There are Titanium, Zinc and Lead White. Everything else is some variation or a mix of them. Lead white,
especially Chemnitz White, has a mythical status among some painters. While I respect other people’s
addictions, I never understood the attraction to this stringy, weak white. Titanium White is colder and
stronger. Nevertheless, as a color, white does not exist, it is an absence rather than a presence. It is
used in paintings in place of light they cannot emit. There was a group of German Expressionists in
1920-s that agreed not to use any white. White clapboard was seen as a status symbol in 18th century
New England. The houses of lesser distinction were covered with darkening shingles. In general, color
white is connected with privilege in the popular imagination. However, it is also associated with purity,
chastity, grief, anger and random unnecessary activity (white lies, white noise). Robert Ryman is a
painter that uses only white color. I was told many times that I use too much white. I continue using too
much of it. Artists (except German expressionists) use more white than other colors. White reflects more
light than other colors. White collar crimes are more lucrative. White objects appear bigger. The Pope
has worn white since 1566. In the 18th and 19th centuries it was unthinkable to have sheets or
underwear of any other color. Kazimir Malevich painted a white square painting in 1917. Swans of the
Northern Hemisphere are white. Objects which are expected to be clean, such as refrigerators and
dishes, toilets and sinks, bed linen and towels, are traditionally white. The woman in white (dame
blanche) is a popular figure in English, French and German ghost stories. Many white objects and
substances, including Titanium White are not actually white but bleached to neutralize their natural
coloring.
 Ultramarine, Cerulean and Prussian Blue since 2005
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Ultramarine, Cerulean and Prussian Blue since 2005
25 photos · Updated 5 months ago
French Cerulean is much warmer than other Ceruleans. The sea off the North West coast of Ireland is
often a mix of Prussian Blue and Van Dyke Brown. Blue is the color of blood evident in most mollusks
and some arthropods. I don’t use King’s Blue anymore. Philadelphia shadows are never blue; if
impressionism began here, everything would have looked very different. However, there is a very
beautiful warm blue haze here in the summer, unfortunately due to the heavy humidity. Blue jay is an
Ultramarine bird, with Prussian Blue wings. Ultramarine was the most expensive blue used by
Renaissance painters. It remained expensive until a synthetic ultramarine was invented in 1826. Yves
Klein Blue is Ultramarine diluted in a flat synthetic resin. Blue eyes are blue because of lack of melanin,
which is brown. A genetic mutation in a single individual in Europe 6,000 years ago led to the
development of blue eyes. Blue (bleu) is the term for extra-rare steak. Euan Uglow painted the wall
behind the model’s stand with Reckitt’s Crown Blue, a laundry whitening. My model J.F.H. brought me a
small box of it from London once. Blue is mistakenly associated with sadness, hence The Blues. In reality
the color of sadness is Payne’s Gray. Scientists are yet to produce a truly blue colored rose, but not for
the lack of trying. There is a fascinating number of Phalo pigments that fit anywhere between blue and
green. Some are so finely balanced in the middle that it is difficult to say where they belong. Blue next to
orange is the first pair of opposite colors I noticed. When people speak of blue, they usually mean a color
closely resembling indigo. El Salvador is the biggest producer of indigo.
 Green Cinnabar and Viridian since 2005
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Green Cinnabar and Viridian since 2005
40 photos · Updated 5 months ago
Cinnabar is actually red. Sap Green doesn't exist. Viridian is fickle. Something called Oriental Green is
similar to Phalo Green but can look like Prussian Blue over Raw Umber. Green Umber is as warm as you
can get in greens before you cross into brown. Most greens are formulated to match some parts of
Umbrian landscape. Albert York used yellowish green umber for blue sky successfully. There is nothing
brighter than Green Cadmium. Rembrandt used no green. Van Gogh painted a green girl on lilac
background. People are quite green on Sienna School paintings because red glazes that used to
balance them now faded. I could never find any use for Chromium Oxide. Green can take almost any
amount of mud. Frank Auerbach painted a London street using mostly Viridian and Cadmium Orange.
The Garden of Earthly Delights always includes a fair amount of bright cold green, etc.