Tuesday, October 23, 2012

indian yellow


This is Jesús Rafael Soto's sculpture, Penetrabile, at LACMA - a forest of yellow plastic tubing (it used to be chartreuse, which was even more forest like: now, I guess, it more resembles a cornfield).  Apparently the color is Indian Yellow, and I can't do better than quote LACMA's website: "(Conservators are precise about such things... the term “Indian yellow” is derived from a color popular in traditional Indian miniature painting made by feeding mango leaves to cows, then collecting and drying their urine to extract the pigment—today, the pigment is synthetic, as the original method was hazardous to the cows. The tubes are not made with this pigment, but the color is a close approximation.)"

It's outside, so small kids can run in and out and try and strangle each other with the strands.  Class, in other words, was at LACMA today (after a truly fascinating visit to their conservation labs, which made me wish that I had a PhD in material science and the eyes of a hawk).




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