“Color is also a luxury item sold like controlled substances by the ounce or gram. The Greeks don’t call color pharmakon for nothing. The word means color, drug, poison, remedy, talisman, cosmetic, and intoxicant. Art stores supply all of these at once; the ultimate bohemian experience. As the poet Lisa Robertson wrote: “Color, like a hormone, acts across, embarrasses, seduces. It stimulates the juicy interval in which emotion and sentiment twist.” And indeed, the purchase of color is an entirely capricious experience — an art store is a kind of fetish shop offering chromatic luxury in aisles, like a supermarket but with an air of esoteric connoisseurship. A good metropolitan art store is usually an intimidating multistory affair staffed by sullen but knowing art school clerks, with staircases to mysterious and all-encompassing storage rooms. It is set up like a bazaar where shoppers can touch and feel everything before buying, although at Madison Avenue prices. The more you touch it, the more you want it. That new gold lacquer, that little jar of iridescent lilac, that special kind of creamy modeling paste. When was the last time I got past the checkout with a big basket of oil paint for less than a thousand? But I shell it out because I need this equipment and am seduced by the ritual of purchasing it.”
sem título, 2012.