Nothing rhymes with…

City Hall. Used with permission, Donald Kinney photo c. 2023

Last night, City Hall was lit up with orange lights to support the SF Giants, but street photographer, Donald Kinny noted that it looked more red than orange. Well, technically, if this were the early Renaissance, then he would be right—it is red, scarlet or cadmium red. Not orange.

Before 1510, the term yellow-red was used (geoluread in Old English—say it aloud with a swallowed g = y) or red-yellow to describe orange. Or the color orange was referred to as tawny (probably a Celtic loan-word). Saffron and green were the most favored colors for Medieval Irish clothing. I imagine that gold was also used to describe orange. It got me asking, why did the English language suddenly have the need to distinguish the colors red from yellow with a new word?

Weirdly the English word orange is a relative linguistic newcomer. It’s a “new” color name, meaning it wasn’t recognized as a separate color name in English until the 1500s….so, yes, some reds border on orange. Especially the light cadmium reds.  

I didn’t understand that when I was taking painting classes at College of Marin why cadmium orange and red were so close in color. I dislike orange. I was pretty relieved when I discovered that color newcomer, alizarin crimson as I favor the blue reds versus the yellow reds. Also alizarin crimson was way less toxic than the cadmiums. Poor mad Vincent. Was it the cadmium yellows and reds he used responsible for his affliction?

Letting my fingers do the walking through the Google pages, I found this: “The first recorded use of "orange" as a colour name in English was in 1502, in a description of clothing purchased for Margaret Tudor.” Curious as to where the term came from, I discovered that it probably came from the Old French, pomme d'orenge. 

Curiouser yet, the color term took 600 years after oranges arrived in Europe, for the color to be named in English by way of those Normans. Perhaps politics and the Reformation played into it? As in the House of Orange? The word orange, or flan bhui is flag-yellow, as there is no word for orange in Irish (oráiste is the fruit) is a politically charged color in Ireland, signifying oppression and the division of Ireland. 

And of course, as you know, in English, nothing rhymes with orange. Unless it’s a Giants home game. Then all bets are on. Then City Hall and Coit Tower are bathed in a victorious orange afterglow. But here is the clincher, early oranges that came all the way from China, or India, weren’t necessarily orange-colored. They were green! They were bitter as well. I read that Florida farmers dye those green oranges orange.

Valencia oranges marked Christmas season for my grandmother who was raised in Bantry, Ireland. Each year her Christmas gift was one Valencia orange wrapped in foil.

Fugitive colors on Vincent van Gogh’s paintings

Vincent van Gogh, Bouquet of Irises, 1890, the background was lemon yellow.

I can’t help but wonder what this painting of Vincent van Gogh’s irises would have looked like when it was new, the yellow-green cast would not have been there and the blues would’ve been more intense. Perhaps even purple. His Bouquet of Irises against a Yellow Background (above) probably depicted purple irises, not blue ones. The yellow-green background to has shifted color and was probably closer to Naples yellow, as Vincent described it as a lemon yellow.

Irises painted May, 1889, at the St. Paul-de-Mausole asylum, in Arles, were once purple.

How much color degradation by photo-oxidation, or chemical reaction to varnishes added later has happened since this canvas was painted? Did Vincent use cadmium yellow or lead-based chrome yellow? Or yellow ochre? Zinc yellow favored by one of his contemporaries, Georges Seurat, too, is unstable. In other words the colors we see in La Grande Jatte are no longer true. They have shifted. 

The invention of new synthetic colors for textile dyes during the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s coupled with the revolutionary invention of paint in a tube in the 1850s, directly led to the era of Modern Art. Not only had the painter’s palette, brightened considerably, painters were having a field day, literally, out painting in the fields, en plein aire. having forsaken the confines of the studio for the bucolic countryside. 

There was a major painting revolution going on. Artists were painting directly from life, not from smudged field notes and memory. Impressionism was in full swing, followed by Post-Impressionism. Color was king. No more drab chiaroscuro paintings. But artist also needed bold new colors that were more stable. There’s the rub.

What we are seeing now in many of Vincent van Gogh’s paintings—especially the yellows—is not what Vincent painted. Chrome-yellow turns brownish-green when exposed to sunlight. Ditto that with the reds and blue-purples. In his famous Bedroom at Arles painting and the many Irises paintings, Vincent used red lake with organic bug-based cochineal, and both were fugitive colors that either darkened, or faded to white. As it is, those white flowers in the field were once red poppies. And the brown buttercups were once yellow.

If we are to understand Vincent van Gogh’s palette choices, we need to know what pigments and binder mediums he used. And how they have changed colors with the passage of time. For example, linseed oil, the most-favored vehicle that binds pigments to the canvas, yellows and darkens with age. Too bad safflower (sunflower) oil wasn’t yet invented. For me, this is all sort of a hold my beer kind of epiphany. I need to recalibrate a long-standing notion of what I think of as Vincent‘s color palette.

It’s a good thing Vincent mixed cobalt blue pigment into his irises as well, otherwise we would be viewing a field of white irises. At least I think he used cobalt. He probably couldn’t have afforded lapis lazuli or ultramarine blue. There was a new synthetic ultramarine blue on the market, but it was terribly pricey. And surely he knew that azurite goes rogue and turns teal green or even black with age. 

UWP journal: poetry files from Vins arrive

13 July. Today I slept late. I’ve been depressed lately, especially yesterday as I dreamed I was still in Amsterdam, and Vins was sitting on the floor, I could see there was a disaster about to happen.

And he said, go home. Sort of like how you tell a dog to go home, the emphasis was on the word go. Cold and deep was his voice, but it wasn’t directed at me. Sure, there was trouble, yes. He was part of it. But he was also shielding me from it. I had no business becoming involved with him. He was telling me to go home out of love, not out of anger or hatred. To protect me from something, I know not what. His own darkness.

Yesterday I finished reading Dracula, it has a quality similar to that, protecting the women folk, especially Mina Leven, though she had a wondrous brain, “like a man’s,” someone said. What catastrophe was about to rain down on Vins’ head here?

I finished my letter to Jan Bogaerts, I’m sure it too is related to my depression. My immobility, my inability to work through the dilemma of both Jan and Vins, childhood friends not speaking to each other—and I was the fulcrum.

Vins says that he loves me, but he is not in love with me, and I know he can’t seem to live with someone. It’s too upsetting for him. Like me, he needs solitude. I leave, give him his space.

Saturday, a letter came with a copy of the poetry files that he had kept. We fought over the phone when I discovered that he went into the private files on my desk. He claimed it was an accident. But I am glad to get the Dutch to English translations. Some poems have gone through the sieve of three languages. Like Marta Manarini: Spanish to Dutch to English.

But it was a wonderful letter particularly adept in avoiding issues of the heart, shedding light on nothing other than I arrived at an unfortunate time. He took his crabbiness out on me.

With Vins, there is no equilibrium between work and people. He feels secure being with a community of teachers, scholars, and writers. I wonder if moving away from friends and lovers, to that of a colleague is the right direction? Then the yes. Our affair had run its course, but we were having trouble letting it go.

There was a very funny story about Vincent van Gogh, buying copiachu, a paint softener, and VO medicine. When Vincent asked if it could be mixed with turpentine, the shopkeeper replied, do you have to destroy your sorry ass even more?

Vincent wanted to give his colors more light and depth, and he used the thinner liberally. Even now his paints aren’t dry And probably never will be. The Potato Eaters and his windmill and trestle paintings are still wet. But the varnish over the top shrank, causing the paint to craze. In 1928 The Potato Eaters was given a new, backing and restorers hot-glued it onto a new canvas. The paint and varnish will remain forever wet.

At Schiphal, all the guards sport machine guns, in preparation for the Israeli Prime Minister’s arrival. Prime Minister Rabin, Dutch Prime Minister Lubin, and the Israeli Embassy are all out to greet the Prime Minister Rabin. Utter chaos.

Jan diagnosed Vins’ hennaed hair as a harbinger of midlife crisis. Maybe so, but it sure was fun slopping what looked like cow shit on each other’s heads, and then washing it out. All green and red.

Unfortunately the henna nested in my hair like a Rastafarian nightmare, and I had to resort to a comb and gobs of cream rinse to coax the last of the henna out. I like my hair hennaed as it’s much thicker and has a red sheen to it. It isn’t all that different from my natural color, but it covers the gray nicely.

Today’s mail brought a parcel from Vinz, half of his birthday roses, because he never bought me flowers, some chocolates, two love, notes, my modem cord, sweatpants, and a wooden Hans Brinker skate. Thawing treasures from the flea market.