What Painting Is: How to Think about Oil Painting ... - Victoria Vesna

32 WHAT PAINTING IS
also be possible to use painting media, or the chemicals in a
child's chemistry set. Even swirling blue food color into a glass of
water is a simple alchemical experiment, and if the color is oil
paint and the water is oil, it is also a routine artistic procedure.
McLean tabulates his ingredients, giving their names in several
different languages:
The four columns nicely summarize four ways of knowing
chemical substances. On the left is the alchemical name, then its
alchemical symbol, followed by the modern chemical name and
symbol. It is typical that there are many variations in the
alchemical names and symbols, and virtually none in the
chemical nomenclature. Alchemists tended to love a measure of
mystery, and many tried to keep things obscure even when they
knew what they were dealing with. Some alchemical texts used
symbols like these instead of words, both as a shorthand and also
to keep the whole activity secret. The symbols express their frame
of mind better than anything else, and I will be using some of
them in this book when they fit my themes.
McLean is interested in the pure phenomenon of liquids
mingling and separating, and how it conjures the idea that the
mind might also be full of mingling and separating thoughts. He
recommends working in a darkened room, and using three
colored light bulbs to help see the changes in the liquids. The
experimenter is to fill a flask with water and add a few crystals of
one of the substances. McLean continues:
Observe minutely the way in which the substance
dissolves. One might for example, see streams of coloured