Art world links which caught my eye...

Incan qeros

This isn't Chariots of the Gods level technology, but it seems 400 years ago the Inca made an impressive discovery about paint.

Somewhere in my stored oil paints, I have a tube of lead white. I bought it probably in the early 1990s, when it was on clearance sale. After centuries of use, lead based paint was banned due to health and environmental concerns, so the art supply store was getting rid of it.

I never actually made a painting with it. Its thick consistency was like nothing else I had ever worked with. I remember the tube was exceptionally heavy for its size, as you'd expect from something made of lead.

The white I used for my oils was Titanium, the same pigment in the white acrylic paint I now use. After the last time I moved my art studio back into my home, I switched to the water based medium due to health and environmental concerns.

Turns out, the Inca knew about titanium white as well, and used it for a while in their art. We didn't find it again until the twentieth century.  

In 1908, at a lab in Niagara Falls, New York, a metallurgist named Auguste Rossi invented a brilliant white pigment that would become almost ubiquitous in human-made stuff and is found today in everything from paint to plastic to pills. The chemical, titanium dioxide, became what color researcher Matthijs de Keijzer calls the "most significant contribution" to an explosion in 20th-century pigment technology, in what some historians refer to as a chromatic revolution, a new look for the world. But archaeologists say that Rossi didn't get there first.

In 2018, researchers in the United States discovered titanium white in 400-plus-year-old ceremonial wooden drinking cups made by the Inca and residing today in various museums. Carved with elaborate geometrical designs, the cups, called qeros, traditionally were not colored. But around the time of the Spanish conquest of Peru in 1530, the Inca started mixing pigments, including titanium white, into resin and decorating qeros with the bright goo.

Read the full article here: SMITHSONIAN - How the Inca Discovered a Prized Pigment

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RICHARD BLEDSOE is a visual story teller; a painter of fables and parables. He received his BFA in Painting from Virginia Commonwealth University. Richard has been an exhibiting artist for over 25 years, in both the United States and internationally. He lives and paints happily in Phoenix, Arizona, with his wife Michele and cat Motorhead. He is the author of Remodern America: How the Renewal of the Arts Will Change the Course of Western Civilization:

"Remodernism is not a style of art, it is a form of motivation. We express the universal language of inspired humanity.

"We do not imitate what came before. We find in ourselves the same divine essence of love and excitement which has inspired masterpieces throughout history. We are strengthened by drawing on traditions thousands of years old.

"We integrate the bold, visionary efforts of the Modern era into a holistic, meaningful expression of contemporary life. Remodernism seeks a humble maturity which heals the fragmentation and contradictions of Modernism, and obliterates the narcissistic lies of Postmodernism.

"Remodernism is the return of art as a revelation."

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I don't fundraise off of my blog. I don't ask for Patreon or Paypal donations. If you'd like to support the Remodern mission, buy a book. Or a painting. 

Learn more About My Art: Visionary Experience

My wife Michele Bledsoe has written her own inspirational book, Painting, Passion and the Art of Life.

Remodernism Video: BEFORE THERE WAS FAKE NEWS, THERE WAS FAKE ART

Visit other posts for more commentary on the state of the arts.

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