114
12.3 No Painting Is an Island
Not surprisingly, part of that intense 8-year+ Belgium Royal Institute for Cultural
Heritage (KIK-IRPA) multi-million-dollar restoration project involved the crucial
use of resins. Indeed, varnishes employed by art restorers typically include one or
more of crucial natural fossil or tree resins, including copal, or mastic and dammar;
or (Cochineal) insect excretions (to achieve the bright varieties of crimson). In the
case of the van Eyck brothers, one of their purportedly major breakthroughs “was
the development—after much experimentation—of a stable varnish that would dry
at a consistent rate” utilizing “linseed and nut oils, and mixed with resins.”
14
Such
components, among many others, are the very basis of most natural varnishes.
Hence, the conservators used “reversible watercolour and resin-based glazing
paints” to fill in the minute damages with which paradoxical human history had
burdened and partly obfuscated the van Eyck brothers’ masterpiece.
15
Seen, then, from a distance, the artistic and scientific cradle that has always been
Ghent is not without its own endemic environmental fates, as one might describe the
ever-unpredictable odysseys of a city’s locals, most of whom disappear within quietly reserved genealogical charts and cemeteries, while the odd few make history
that is invariably ecologically compromised. A very similar History Paradox
attended upon Baekeland’s Polish/German/Swiss contemporary, the chemist Fritz
Haber (1868–1934), whose own careful research and discoveries would backfire in
ways no one who was not caught out in the trenches of World War I would ever fully
grasp. Nor has the Green Revolution, so abetted by the Haber-Bosch process of
synthesizing ammonia, ever been reconciled with the human population explosion
it helped foster.
14 See WebMuseum, Paris, “Gothic Innovation in the North,” https://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/
auth/eyck/, © 19 Sep 2002, Nicolas Pioch.
15 See “Ghent Altarpiece: latest phase of restoration unmasks the humanized face of the Lamb of
God,” by Hannah McGivern, 18
th December 2019, The Art Newspaper, https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/facelift-for-the-mystic-lamb, Accessed January 24, 2020. See also, “Unsettled by
the Dead Animals in Your Paint? Welcome to the World of Vegan Art Supplies,” by Dylan Kerr,
August 8, 2017, Art World, https://news.artnet.com/art-world/vegan-art-supplies-1039508#:~
:text=(Ox%20gall%2C%20the%20dried%20extract,of%20things%20to%20forget%20about. See
also, “The Bad Vegetarian Artist: Animal Products In Watercolour Supplies,” by Lee Angold,
November 24, 2017, https://leeangold.com/2017/11/24/the-bad-vegetarian-artist-animal-productsin-watercolour-supplies/; and, “Kaia Natural Watercolor – Animal derived ingredients in paint and
art supplies,” September 14, 2019. Taken collectively, animal deaths involved in the overall painter’s arsenal may include: Cochenille lice, animal bones, cuttlefish, chicken eggs, Murex snails,
human remains (at least during the Renaissance), cow livers, ox gall, animal glycerin, animal fats,
animal collagen, rabbit skin glue, mink, camel and sable hairs. See https://www.naturalwatercolor.
com/en_GB/a-57397538/blog/animal-derived-ingredients-in-paint-and-art-supplies/#description,
Accessed July 8, 2020.
12 The Paradise Paradox
12.3 No Painting Is an Island
Not surprisingly, part of that intense 8-year+ Belgium Royal Institute for Cultural
Heritage (KIK-IRPA) multi-million-dollar restoration project involved the crucial
use of resins. Indeed, varnishes employed by art restorers typically include one or
more of crucial natural fossil or tree resins, including copal, or mastic and dammar;
or (Cochineal) insect excretions (to achieve the bright varieties of crimson). In the
case of the van Eyck brothers, one of their purportedly major breakthroughs “was
the development—after much experimentation—of a stable varnish that would dry
at a consistent rate” utilizing “linseed and nut oils, and mixed with resins.”
14
Such
components, among many others, are the very basis of most natural varnishes.
Hence, the conservators used “reversible watercolour and resin-based glazing
paints” to fill in the minute damages with which paradoxical human history had
burdened and partly obfuscated the van Eyck brothers’ masterpiece.
15
Seen, then, from a distance, the artistic and scientific cradle that has always been
Ghent is not without its own endemic environmental fates, as one might describe the
ever-unpredictable odysseys of a city’s locals, most of whom disappear within quietly reserved genealogical charts and cemeteries, while the odd few make history
that is invariably ecologically compromised. A very similar History Paradox
attended upon Baekeland’s Polish/German/Swiss contemporary, the chemist Fritz
Haber (1868–1934), whose own careful research and discoveries would backfire in
ways no one who was not caught out in the trenches of World War I would ever fully
grasp. Nor has the Green Revolution, so abetted by the Haber-Bosch process of
synthesizing ammonia, ever been reconciled with the human population explosion
it helped foster.
14 See WebMuseum, Paris, “Gothic Innovation in the North,” https://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/
auth/eyck/, © 19 Sep 2002, Nicolas Pioch.
15 See “Ghent Altarpiece: latest phase of restoration unmasks the humanized face of the Lamb of
God,” by Hannah McGivern, 18
th December 2019, The Art Newspaper, https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/facelift-for-the-mystic-lamb, Accessed January 24, 2020. See also, “Unsettled by
the Dead Animals in Your Paint? Welcome to the World of Vegan Art Supplies,” by Dylan Kerr,
August 8, 2017, Art World, https://news.artnet.com/art-world/vegan-art-supplies-1039508#:~
:text=(Ox%20gall%2C%20the%20dried%20extract,of%20things%20to%20forget%20about. See
also, “The Bad Vegetarian Artist: Animal Products In Watercolour Supplies,” by Lee Angold,
November 24, 2017, https://leeangold.com/2017/11/24/the-bad-vegetarian-artist-animal-productsin-watercolour-supplies/; and, “Kaia Natural Watercolor – Animal derived ingredients in paint and
art supplies,” September 14, 2019. Taken collectively, animal deaths involved in the overall painter’s arsenal may include: Cochenille lice, animal bones, cuttlefish, chicken eggs, Murex snails,
human remains (at least during the Renaissance), cow livers, ox gall, animal glycerin, animal fats,
animal collagen, rabbit skin glue, mink, camel and sable hairs. See https://www.naturalwatercolor.
com/en_GB/a-57397538/blog/animal-derived-ingredients-in-paint-and-art-supplies/#description,
Accessed July 8, 2020.
12 The Paradise Paradox