Polychromatic Quintessence

Title
Polychromatic Quintessence (Ekstrakt)

Sites
Aarhus, Fur, Athens
2019-2025

Support
Kulturudviklingspuljen, Aarhus Kommune 2025
DIA Det Danske Kultutinstitut i Athen 2025

“Even our anxiety to obtain definite names for definite colors is completely overshadowed by the stronger wish to understand the secret of their harmonious relationship.”
Vanderpoel: Colorproblems

In the art project Polychromatic Quintessence we work to “extract” color nuances from a place. That is, we work to mix some precise color tones that we find on the present plants, roots, insects, stones, soil, decomposed plant parts at a selected place.

In Werner’s Nomenclature of Colors (1814)* each individual color tone is related precisely to a plant part, a bird, a mineral, for example to the white color of the breast feathers of the black-backed gull or the white color of the sea buckthorn flower.

The color tones in Polychromatic Quintessence are similarly taken from specific growths, e.g. where we zoom in on details and work on mixing precise shades.

The precision in this process is based on the immediate perception of the color. When zooming in, more and more variations are revealed. The surface of the plant Blæresmælde’s flowers, for example, clearly alternates in detail between light violet and green.

The observed color shades are painted on square wooden blocks, slightly varying in size, about 2.5×15-20×15-20 cm with an indication of the source and month on the back: “Kragefod October”, “Musevitke July”, “Gåsepotentil June” etc.

Polychromatic Quintessence is all about collecting color shades from places. To describe a place using color. The essential thing is color perception. The immersion in finding and focusing on color shades, which are analyzed and mixed. By combining the colors in different ways at the current place, I compose site-specific images. The result looks like mega-magnified pixels.

The focus of Polychromatic Quintessence is to explore the mutual power of colors. Experiments with how color nuances can create distinctive spaces and atmospheres, among other things through their ability to enhance or tone down each other.

In his essay “Chromofobia” from 2001, David Bachelor describes how color is considered “dangerous”: Color is thought to belong to another ‘foreign’ body – usually the feminine, the oriental, the primitive, the infantile, the vulgar, the queer or the pathological. Foreign and therefore dangerous.

He points to a connection with the 18th century archaeological understanding of the role of color in ancient art.

In 1764, the German archaeologist Winckelmann published the work Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums, where it is stated that “white marble reduces sensuality and thus radiates ideal beauty, a beauty imbued with spirituality and reflecting the divine”. So the color belonged according to W. the material world and had no place in the spiritual world. This view became one of the pillars of Western cultural identity. And in the narrative of the Western world’s sovereign ideals of beauty. (Jan Stubbe Østergaard: The Polychromy of Antique Sculpture: A Challenge to Western Ideals?)

Anne-Marie Pedersen, artist, Aarhus

Maria Bruun, artist and graphic designer, Copenhagen

Selma Krag, stud., artistic assistant, Aarhus

Literature:

David Bachelor: Chromophobia

Winckelmann, 1763: Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums:

R Heider: Universals in color naming and memory

Werner’s nomenclature of colours: Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours is a book of named color samples compiled by Abraham Gottlob Werner and subsequently amended by Patrick Syme. The book, published in 1814, was used by Charles Darwin in his scientific observations.

Kitab al-Durra al-Maknuna (The Book of the Hidden Pearl) of Jabir ibn Hayyan

N. Vanderpoel: Color Problems

Jan Stubbe Østergaard: The Polychromy of Antique Sculpture: A Challenge to Western Ideals? “To this day, the white of the marble remains the essential characteristic of Antique Greek and Roman sculpture and architecture. The stone and its color are inseparably associated with the concept of Greek and Roman art and culture. For most of us, it is an attribute of Western classical Antiquity in general. It could even be claimed that sculpture and architecture in white marble are more than merely “classical Antiquity”. For this conception has become one of the mainstays of Western cultural identity.”