Making Colour – The National Gallery, London

I was definitely in my art-geeky element in this exhibition, based on research by the National Gallery’s scientific department, and largely using works from the permanent collection.  As the name suggests, it’s about making colour – the exhibition space is divided like a colour wheel, with rooms moving from blue to purple through green, yellow and orange, and red (with gold and silver thrown in for good measure), and it tells the story of how artists have sought to recreate the world around them using pigments ranging from minerals to those developed in laboratories.

What I really enjoyed was the fresh viewpoint that it brought to the artworks.  The association between the virgin Mary’s typically blue robes, for example, and the fact that the pigment ultramarine was more valuable than gold.  Or the idea that a woman’s gown in a portrait by Moroni would have been so expensive that it may never have actually existed, but using the same pigments in a painted version was a way to reach for the same status on the sly.  Or the fact that the Impressionists never could have had the freedom to experiment with colour had colours not become available in cheaper tubes of paint, rather than rare and costly pigments.  Or the Victorian rage for purple after mauveine was invented in 1856, which was duly recreated by artists despite the lack of a similar colour for paint. You can see how I was in my geeky element.  Throughout, the exhibition is very clear on which pigment the viewer is looking at, where it comes from, whether the painting we see today differs from the artist’s intention, and what the cultural context of its use was.

As I was getting ready to write about the exhibition for all of you lucky blog readers, I read a couple of reviews from major newspapers, including one in the FT which expressed disappointment in the populist titles for the different sections and the lack of major works by key artists.  I totally disagree.*  I thought this was a very informative exhibition, which was clearly laid out, with well-chosen works to reinforce each point made in the texts, and I personally love the fact that it’s not a blockbuster.  It would probably have been easy for the gallery to get a couple of major works in, call it a must-see and have queues out the doors, but it’s nice to go to an exhibition whose stated mission is sharing the work of the institution’s scientific staff rather than increasing visitor numbers.

One last thing I enjoyed:  as you exit the exhibition, there is a participatory experiment on colour perception set up in the cinema.  If you go to the exhibition, it is definitely worth the time, as it strikes the right balance between collecting data from exhibition-goers, and showing really interesting visual effects around the way the brain processes colour.  More exhibitions from the scientific department in the future, I think!

*Ok, I can’t in good conscience say I totally disagree, there was one point where I rolled my eyes at the section entitled ‘Seeing Red’, with a dramatic opening text and image of a woman’s lips.  It might not be overstating it to call that particular bit tacky…