Perylene Black – By Simon Willems

Perylene Black – By Simon Willems
16th January 2020

Using black in painting and getting it right is always a tall order. On one level, there is the way in which black is as much a force as it is a colour, and on another level, how its history is shaped by these two inter-related concepts.

Renoir’s mantra that ‘nature knows only colour’ – at black’s expense – reminds us of the singularity and anomalous nature of black, even if this assertion remains ultimately misguided. One need only think of the power of black in the history of painting, from Pieter de Hooch through Goya and Manet to the modernist masterpieces of Kasmir Malevich and Ad Reinhardt to truly clock how its symbolic force is locked into its status as a colour. And yet, black is not about light but its opposite in fact…. the switching off of colour. This is precisely what the carbon nanotube technology of Vantablack that was created in Britain in 2014 as the blackest thing in the world proposes: the trapping of 99.965% of light on the spectrum.

However, there is a black that is very central to my practice since I first discovered it, and one that I get particularly excited about whenever I deliver painting workshops: Perylene Black. As I understand it, Perylene Black remains a pigment that I have yet to find repeated elsewhere, beyond Winsor & Newton, and one that, unusually, in being labelled as ‘Black’ in oil and ‘Green’ in watercolour, reveals a broader identity crisis. This is the crux of the matter: when sparring out with other blacks in the range, such as Ivory, Lamp and Mars – not to mention Blue – its greenness comes to the fore, undermining any case that it could be identified as a black in the first instance. And yet, at the same time, unlike Prussian Green or even Viridian, which are perhaps those colder green hues to which it shares most, it doesn’t appear to be at home either, exposing its strength as a tone rather than a colour, and one that works well behind the scenes, seeping through and infiltrating the palette quietly.

Opacifying Perylene Black with white demonstrates this tonal prowess to best effect, providing the painter with a neutral range to play off other colours: complementary hues are welcome, and I often use Potter’s Pink or Perylene Maroon in sync with Perylene Black as a harmonising force. Of course, another way to assess its role and temperature is to set it up in relation to a range of earth colours. Burnt Sienna – or even Raw Sienna – as well as both umbers, mark out the degree and nature of coldness that Perylene Black assumes. In that sense, where Pthalo Turquoise or even Viridian read more like ‘mineral’ colours in their coldness when placed up against an earth shade – and more of nature in that particular way – Perylene Black lacks this quality, reading more readily as industrial and man-made. But this shouldn’t be taken as read that ‘as’ an industrial shade, Perylene Black appears outwardly ‘artificial’; its semi-transparent nature and depth as a black save it from appearing as such. Perylene Black remains an enigma simply because it resists placement, undermining any attempt that its colour and force remain constant.

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