Pigmentum was a primary participant in a collaborative project between ourselves, Tate and the University of Manchester to study dynamic structural changes in Prussian blue and Prussian blue analogues under anoxic conditions using XAFS. We were initially awarded five days of beam time on the Daresbury synchrotron facility November 2007 and then three days on the Diamond Light Source in April 2008.
You are currently browsing the yearly archive for 2007.
A postgraduate internship at Pigmentum has been awarded under a Heritage Lottery Fund scheme to Helen Wilson, running September 2007 to September 2008. Helen has a background in chemistry at the University of Oxford.
Read more about current HLF Internships here.
The Pollock Matters exhibition was held 1 September – 9 December 2007 at Boston College’s McMullen Museum of Art. This was an exhibition tracing the relationship between the artist Jackson Pollock and the photographer Herbert Matter.
The exhibition website explains that the show is “Comprising over 150 paintings, drawings, photographs, and sculptures, this exhibition explores the personal and artistic relationship between famed American Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock and noted Swiss-born photographer and graphic designer Herbert Matter. Featuring compelling visual and documentary evidence, it demonstrates a critically important, but hitherto unexplored, chain of influence between two creative individuals who were close friends. Herbert Matter’s innovative brand of action photography, in use by 1943, emerges as one of the factors that helped Pollock to conceptualize a unique painting style in the immediately following years. This exhibition reveals how strongly Pollock’s radical artistic goal of “energy made visible” was allied with the stimulus of Herbert Matter’s innovation.”
Nicholas Eastaugh authored two chapters for the exhibition catalogue:
Nicholas Eastaugh, “Analyzing Jackson Pollock: Scientific Methods and the Study of the Matter Paintings”. In: Landau, E.G. and Cernuschi, C. Pollock Matters McMullen Museum of Art, Boston (2007). [PDF]
Nicholas Eastaugh and Bhavini Gorsia “What it Says on the Tin: A Preliminary Study of the Set of Paint Cans and the Floor in the Pollock-Krasner Studio”. In: Landau, E.G. and Cernuschi, C. Pollock Matters McMullen Museum of Art, Boston (2007). [PDF]
The full catalogue can be obtained here.
Nicholas Eastaugh was invited to attend the 35th Annual AIC Meeting in Richmond, VA to present a keynote paper entitled “Authenticity and the scientific method. Past approaches, present problems and future promise”.
The theme of the Meeting was Fakes, Forgeries and Fabrications: “Insatiable demand and record prices at auction for fine art and artefacts have fuelled new interest in optimistic attribution of cultural property, will misattribution of property, and the creation of deceptive forgeries. How do the marketplace, museums, and courts define fakes, forgeries, and fabrications? How do connoisseurs, art historians, and scientists discriminate authentic works? When does deceptive manufacture of misattribution cross the line to criminal fraud? How does law enforcement apprehend and prosecute criminal perpetrators? How does the law define an expert? How can conservators, scientists, and other art experts protect themselves from civil complaints of libel, slander, disparagement, and more? Does authenticity affect insurance underwriting and claims for damage or loss?”
The paper will be published in a forthcoming volume of the AIC-PSG Postprints, but you can find a copy of the text here.
In the two and a half years since our last redesign, a substantial amount has happened for the Pigmentum Project: we published the Pigment Compendium, won a L’Oréal Art and Science of Colour Prize, and joined the University of Oxford.
The new site reflects our progess, listing new members of the team, academic papers authored by members of the Project, and detailing our extensive collection of historical pigments, compiled for our work on the Compendium and now available to interested researchers.
Also newly available are extracts from the two books that comprise the Pigment Compendium, A Dictionary of Historical Pigments and Optical Microscopy of Historical Pigments. Both extracts can be found on Pigment Compendium page.