{"id":151564,"date":"2025-09-18T00:52:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T00:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/151564\/"},"modified":"2025-09-18T00:52:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T00:52:07","slug":"jackson-pollock-masterpiece-found-to-contain-extinct-manganese-blue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/151564\/","title":{"rendered":"Jackson Pollock Masterpiece Found to Contain Extinct Manganese Blue"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tAn extinct variety of manganese blue paint is one of the many inextricable ingredients of Jackson Pollock\u2019s 1948 masterpiece Number 1A, according to the authors of a paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The nearly nine-foot-wide canvas, splattered with paint that evokes an expansive celestial atmosphere, is a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.moma.org\/collection\/works\/78699\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">mainstay<\/a> in the teeming galleries of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tUsing a technique called Raman spectroscopy to study the molecular makeup of the painting\u2019s pigment,  the paper\u2019s five authors\u2014from Stanford University, City College of New York, and MoMA\u2019s conservation department\u2014identified manganese blue, a synthetic paint popular in the 20th century before being phased out in the 1990s due to environmental concerns related to its manufacture.<\/p>\n<p>\t\tRelated Articles<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"c-lazy-image__img lrv-u-background-color-grey-lightest lrv-u-width-100p lrv-u-display-block lrv-u-height-auto\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Martha-Tuttle_portrait.Photo-by-Daniel-Browne.jpg\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Martha-Tuttle_portrait.Photo-by-Daniel-Browne.jpg\" alt=\"A woman sits on a wooden chair looking at the camera.\" data-lazy- data-lazy- height=\"\" width=\"\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s really interesting to understand where some striking color comes from on a molecular level,\u201d Stanford chemist Edward Solomon <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/jackson-pollock-painting-manganese-blue-1948-4acd29ec34bcbf5b52be4807d65be9b1\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">told<\/a> the Associated Press. Artists use the striking color to which he referred; it is used as well in other applications, including coloring cement for swimming pools.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tA <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pnas.org\/doi\/10.1073\/pnas.2513166122\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">description<\/a> of the paper from PNAS distills the finding into intriguing if inscrutable terms: \u201cExcited-state exchange interactions create multiple absorption features that filter nonblue light. This highlights the ability of molecular inorganic pigments to leverage ligand field effects to create multiple visible absorption features and lattice electrostatics to fine-tune the color.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tThe discovery stands to help conservation efforts around a painting that will hopefully be the source of further study for a very long time. As MoMA conservation scientist Abed Haddad <a href=\"https:\/\/news.artnet.com\/art-world\/jackson-pollock-manganese-blue-identified-2688874\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">told<\/a> Artnet News: \u201cIt offers insights into the development of the artist\u2019s practice and to contextualize the work within the oeuvre and understand trends in the manufacture and use of certain colorants over time. This knowledge can be critical for developing effective strategies for display, since many pigments are sensitive to environmental factors such as intense light, ultraviolet radiation, and fluctuations in humidity.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An extinct variety of manganese blue paint is one of the many inextricable ingredients of Jackson Pollock\u2019s 1948&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":151565,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,49,48,356,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-151564","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}