Abstract

The commodification of art over the past three centuries has resulted in an increase of colors available to artists while at the same time leading to artists’ alienation from color as they no longer control the raw materials or the making of their colors. Going back to the beginning of art production, The Red Bears from the Chauvet Cave were made with red pigments found in the surrounding area and created by the artist’s hands. When artists attempted to access colors beyond their local environment, it invariably meant relying on other sources, which might cause them to abandon their work in progress as they waited for pigments that were never going to arrive, as was the case with The Entombment (1500) by Michelangelo. In the 19th century, Western colonial powers took control over sources of color and instituted legal protections for pigments—setting a precedent for color copyrighting and the rise of color corporations. Facing this color capitalism, which exploited both the raw material and the artist, some artists began to copyright their works. Vanta Black (2014) by Anish Kapoor is one of the most prominent examples of trademarking and copyrighting a color. Other artists moved away from the commodification of color, with works like Listen, (2019), by Amanda Brazier, who returned to local earth pigments in an attempt to explore color sovereignty. This paper argues that as artists lost control over their materials, they also lost their control over their art process by being removed from these materials. Within contemporary art practice, artists are now seeking a resolution in two vastly different ways of reconnecting with their resources.

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