By Chen Kuang-yi
Contemporary Art History Ph.D., Paris Nanterre University
Full time professor, Director of the Department of Fine Arts, Director of the Fine Arts College, National Taiwan University of Arts
German born artist Inge Boesken-Kanold (1939-) who has traveled extensively in Asia and currently lives in the southern French city of La Coste, creates works that are firmly rooted in extensive materials research and break new ground. Indeed, she can perhaps be best characterized as one of the defender of monochrome, which is a reference to her pieces being constructed from changes in grey hues or other colors. This collection of 20th Century masters starts with “Black Square” (1915) and “White on White” (1918) by Kazimir Malevich (1878-1935) and brings together countless artists who sought out boundless possibilities through monochrome works. Indeed, while Malevich used his monochrome paintings as pathways to the infinite, the graphic paintings of Rodtchenko Alexandre (1891-1956) expressed the material nature of emptiness; Barnett Newman (1905-1970) and Mark Rothko (1903-1970) expressed an inner world of mystery; Ad Reinhardt (1913-1967) challenged the limits of the visual; Robert Ryman (1930-2019) sought to measure both material and vehicle; Yves Klein (1928-1962) viewed monochrome as an energy field, whereas Lee Ufan used it to give voice to Eastern philosophy. Contemporary French art historian Denys Riout describes monochrome paintings as “re-presentation lacking re-presentation and invisible visuals.” However, it is precisely because of this depletion in color that such paintings are replete with powerful intent: “Certain people yearn for aesthetics, others for the sublime, while still others highlight spiritism or materialism, ridicule or despair … Superficially this category appears narrow, but the way in which artists rich in imagination provide the possibility of infinite invention tests the observational skills of art critics” (1). In this way, countless artists have sought to reduce their paintings so all that is left is a single color, as a way of upgrading or reinventing their creative approach to painting.
However, most artists change the color on which they focus as they move from one creative series to another, with no one choosing to focus solely on a single color like Inge Boesken-Kanold. Although the artist explored such natural hues as ocher, cinnabar and red orpiment during her time in Asia in 1975, after successfully unlocking the technique to extract purple from the Murex Linnaeus in Lebanon in 1979 her art became exclusively purple and she has spoken of her obsession for the color. Moreover, with the exception of Yves Klein, who researched and developed “International Klein Blue” and obtained a patent in the process, few of the aforementioned artists developed and produced their own pigments and as such, I would say her obsession with purple is rooted in materials science. We do not need to spend too much time detailing the importance of materials to artists other than to say in 1910, when Marcel Duchamp came up with “ready-made” art he was mocking the painters in the industrial age who no longer made their own pigments. In fact, the quality and uniqueness of a work of art comes firstly from the artist’s control of the materials, together with the level and rigorousness of research. Moreover, the rise of “materialism” in the 20th Century served to expose the mistaken approach of artists in the past when they attempted to cover the vehicle with images. They powerfully argued that the true nature of materials should be respected, which encouraged more artists to “let the material speak for itself.” Nonetheless, the issue of “obsession” is not merely an issue of materials as sculptor and art critic Sidney Geist observed: “a preference for materials is a psychological issue, not a sculpting issue.” As such, it is highly likely that the obsession with purple expressed by Boesken-Kanold is an issue of psychology.
It is certainly true that the color purple has its own rich legendary, historical and symbolic meaning. Indeed, legends involving purple can be traced back to antiquity. In 1636, Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) painted the oil painting “The Discovery of Purple by Hercules’s Dog” which vividly depicts this Ancient Roman legend. Hercules walks his dog on a beach, when the canine casually bites through a Murex Linnaeus, inadvertently discovering the secret of the “purple Murex Linnaeus.” Thereafter, Hercules dyes his clothes purple and takes this gift from the ocean and presents it to the people of Tyre in Phoenica. Although this is a mythical story, in the past many historians believed the color purple did in fact originate with the Phoenicans. However, newly unearthed archaeological evidence indicates that the first people to invent Murex Linnaeus dye were not the Phoenicans, but the Minoans on Crete under the Aegean civilization. A scientific analysis of images of saffron flowers seen in the Xeste 3 mural at the site of Akrotiri, which was buried by a volcanic eruption in around 1650-1530 BCE, has since confirmed that purple pigment was extracted from the Murex Linnaeus. Inge Boesken-Kanold has written several articles detailing her research into this ancient color, including citing sections in Homer’s epics “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” that reference the color. She even visited the Minoan Civilization site to investigate in person. Because creating this ancient color was particularly expensive (producing a purple robe required several thousand or more than 10,000 Murex Linnaeus), with a complex and difficult manufacturing process, such items were very expensive and therefore became symbols of wealth and power. However, the religious significance of the color is perhaps even more worthy of note. The “Old Testament” of the Bible records how the high priests of Judaism wore a robe known as an “ephod” and based on the Jewish “Talmud” this clothing was made using an organic blue-purple dye called Tekhelet, which was most likely extracted from Mediterranean Murex Linnaeusx. The latter could also be used to simultaneously produce blue, purple and red lines and when the Jewish people left Egypt was used to build a tabernacle based on instructions from God (2). Before Jesus was killed, the Roman soldiers also dressed him in a purple robe as a way of mocking his audacious claim to be “king of the Jews” (3). In this context, it is less surprising that Boesken-Kanold once said of her obsession with the color: “My obsession with purple can be understood from its past mysteries and the changes that absolutely connect it to light and oxygen, with it ultimately being expressed by multiple hues, of which one race of people selected just one: As such, the blue-purple color Tekhelet re-presents how humanity is able to invent concepts of the highest abstraction” (4).
Faced with an expert such as Boesken-Kanold it is unnecessary to elaborate on the rich history of purple as she has gone as far as to discover a way of using rock salt to preserve the purple excreting gland of Murex Linnaeus, but even that is not enough to call her a painter who works exclusively in purple. Finally, I strongly recommend that the audience focuses on the artist’s purple “abstract paintings” built on the foundation of her exquisite use of materials science and highly developed sensitivities. Her paintings not only showcase subtle changes in color they also display a writing nature akin to that of artists such as Cy Twombly (1928-2011). Moreover, it is as using this mysterious color from antiquity enables her to leave behind traces of a romantic journey through time and space, as if writing down her emotions expressed through multiple vehicles. It may appear simple and frail, but it has the power to move the human heart.
Denys Riout, La peinture monochrome. Histoire et archéologie d’un genre, Gallimard, folio Essais, p.14.
Footnotes
1: Denys Riout, La peinture monochrome. Histoire et archéologie d’un genre, Gallimard, folio Essais, p.14.
2: See Chapter 26, “Book of Exodus,” “Old Testament.”
3: See “The Gospel of Mark” 15:17, “The Gospel of John” 19:2, “The New Testament
4: http://pourpre.inge.free.fr/