In 1948, Jackson Pollock One of his most iconic paintings ended. Was baptized as simply as Number 1This work surpassed as one of the greatest ideas about the personality of the artist. But it also fell like a mystery from the use of a blue tone, which has not been able to identify so far. Shiny and stunning, the pigment brings to the whole picture the appearance dazzling which contributes to the generation of false sensation of infinity in the viewer.
For almost 80 years, many artists and scientists tried to unravel how he received this mysterious blue. Of course, there were some suspicions, but it was still not possible to check which one was the most successful.
Chemical team Stanford University He determined the pigment used by Jackson Pollock to get this blue tone. And it is not surprising that other artists failed to imitate him, since the pigment chosen by the American artist was banned or from the 90s for their toxicity both for people and for the environment. In fact, the most signful picture of the artist is a little toxic.
Why couldn’t he identify the blue color of Jackson Pollock?
Jackson Pollock used a lot of blue pigments throughout his career, from Abroad is blue V FtalocyaninPassing through Cerulean Blue, Cobalt Blue and Prussia Blue, in particular. However, none of them corresponded to the power of the picture Number 1. Since the death of Jackson Pollock in 1956, many experts have tried to solve the secret that some of them pointed to the most exotic pigment: The manganese is blueThis field consists of Barium Mangagat Sulfat And it is also known as PB33.
This compound began to be synthesized in a fairly widespread method in 1907, although it did not reach Patent as a pigment Until 1935. Since then, many artists have seen in this substance an impressive alternative to all existing blue tones. Maybe Jackson Pollock was one of them. However, a series of false negatives forced scientists Continue the wrong way.
It turns out that the artist did not use the pigment alone, but mixed it with oil, which served as binding, and that, unfortunately, This changed the measurements which are usually performed to determine the origin of the pigment.
How was this analysis carried out?
To determine the origin of the pigment, they are usually used Spectroscopic testsThe field is well known that, technically speaking, There are no colors. They are actually the result of how our brain processes the light that reaches the eye. White light, a mixture of all wavelengths, affects the colored surface, so that some wavelengths are absorbed, while others are reflected. We see interpretation of the wavelength that reflectedAll this, logically, depends on the chemical composition of this surface, therefore it is here that pigments enter the game. For example, a black pigment is the one that absorbs all possible wavelengths. One white, on the other hand, reflects them all. In the middle, all the others where some are reflected, while others are absorbed.
Therefore, to chemically identify the pigment often The laser of light affects the laser light On it, and then analyze the wavelengths of the same that are reflected and absorbed. This is what is done with spectroscopic methods, such as Ramanov spectroscopyThe field is precisely the technique that was still used to analyze the picture of Jackson Pollock. However, the results were falsified with oil when using a laser line with high energy 532 Nm.
What has changed now?
Scientists of Stanford University, the results of which were recently published that Jackson Pollock could use The manganese is blue. Therefore, they returned to Scrap a tiny amount of paint And she analyzed it using the spectroscopy of combination scattering. This time, however, They changed the laser light beam and used one of 785 nanometersWhich did not interact in the same way with oil and showed the profile of reflection and absorption of light equivalent to the well -known manganese blue.
This shows this painting Number 1 It is unique because it uses pigments that are prohibited currently. But this is also because, as in other works of this artist, all his personality and his emotions are embodied between BRUSHRY and SplaShes of Paint. No one could repeat his work, even if he gave him the palette that he used to draw it. This, among many others, is a magic of art.
Source: Hiper Textual
