Heat or storm. The beginning of August is a time of a slight limbo, when one can waste time more than usual staring at the furiously growing herbage that has to make it in time for the next wave of heat, a smidge of wind breaking what has been dragging too long to grow, to implant, to weave into everything around it.
What color accompanies this, what is worn in summer? White, still white. Let’s see what it can mean.
Two paintings, a good chunk of time between them, white dominates both. At least that’s how they are described.
Rafael’s La velata remains anonymous, we are not sure who posed. We know as much as we can see: the unobvious amber around her neck, the strand of hair instead of a second hand reminding us of the passing moment, the crimp of a dress of white moiré, thickly woven silk trimmed with gold. A maiden in such white would have caused anxiety in the box at Wimbledon and at Royal Ascot races.
Malevich’s White square, as usual, it’s not quite clear when painted. The one on display at New York’s MoMa is said to be from 1918. Malevich’s experiments with white on white began earlier, around 1916. The square stretcher measures 79.5 × 79.5 cm. La velata fits on a canvas 82 × 60.5 cm, closer to the golden ratio.
He’s photographing something, measuring it in RGB, in CMYK, setting precise traps for the color mapping space. He’s photographing something, measuring it in RGB, in CMYK, setting precise traps for the color mapping space. He treads over mathematical transformations of R3colour vector space. He fills hours of transatlantic flights studying publications attempting to reconcile the Young-Helmholz theory of color vision and Hering’s, for example. All to no avail, all as ineffective as peg leg Ahab’s pursuit of a white whale. Let’s not resolve the ending, does it have to be as tragic as Herman Melville’s? Whiteness as an entirely impractical triviality remains one of those transitory qualities of which human life is composed. We can neither fix it, nor explain it. It’s probably not worth the effort.
