George Washington Carver
It looks like a color like the others: a strong, enveloping blue. However, the history of its production and use is the history of an American people disadvantaged because they belong to a black minority.
A century ago, George Washington Carver registered two patents related to his new method of manufacture of paints and dyes from Alabama clay.
The scientist and inventor had discovered that iron-rich soil could be used in a chemical reaction with a compound of potassium and nitric acid to produce a vibrant blue pigment, says .
This tone is the same as the “Prussian blue”as it was later called used by Picasso in his “blue period”. It can also be found, for example, in the famous “Kanagawa Wave” painting.
Carver Blue resembles Prussian Blue and Cobalt Blue (shown)
But Carver’s paint pigments, best known for his work with agricultural cropswere never commercialized, and the method the scientist used became just one of millions of forgotten patents in the archives — until three years ago.
Amanda Williams is an American artist and architect who “regained” Carver’s blue with the help of scientists. And not without discovering some secrets about the “forgotten” color.
“Normally, blue is produced synthetically… but he managed obtain it from an ingredient that existed in abundance“, Williams said. “So there was a practical aspect, but there was also ingenuity in discovering that things around us can produce unexpected results.”
Williams discovered that for Carver, color wasn’t just a crazy invention— it was, rather, a tool to beautify the homes of the region’s poorest residentswhich could be obtained through natural resources.
As in his encouragement of local farmers to get rich through bountiful harvests (which included soybeans, walnuts, sweet potatoes, and peanuts), a color was a fundamental component of his plans of autonomy, dignity and prosperity for black families in the South.
The inventor then, a century ago, encouraged the inhabitants of his hometown, Chicago, to paint your houses with bright colors and I wanted to provide them with the necessary materials for this. It was a symbol of race, power, and the fight against social inequalities.
These colors also had a double meaning: they also resembled the shades of discriminatory government maps of North American cities, which were used to deny financial services to primarily African-American neighborhoods in the 20th century.
This practice was known as “redlining” and, according to CNN, it had profound effects that continue to affect struggling communities today.
The most common examples of this practice are related to refusal of credit and insurancehealth care and development of food deserts in minority neighborhoods.
“He was constantly looking for a way he could be autonomous,” Williams said of Washington. “The idea of creating a company that mass-produced this paint could be affinancial source to be able to do other work“. However, the patent failed and fell into oblivion, from where it is only now emerging.
Now, as part of the New Orleans Art Triennial, Williams has painted two architectural structures important to African-American history in Carver blue, as a testament to his capabilities and black innovation in general.
“I’m making sure Carver is included in the conversation, even if it’s a different way of approaching the idea of color and pigment“, stated the artist. “I find it very beautiful that, despite his fame and notoriety as a scientist, deep down he was a painter and an artist, and that was equally important.”
