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A Mexican artist rediscovers a lost color sacred to his ancestors.
As of late, I've been obsessed with colors. To think that some of them can't really be replicated because they have been lost to time or they're too damaging due to their composition with dangerous chemicals is something I never thought of until recently.
A whole color/shade disappearing because of it. I get just as intrigued by people who are dedicated to making attempts at recovering those colors, even if it's just through written media, taking the time to register it. But when they actually achieve itāthe recreationāI'm impressed by their level of commitment.
Dec 21, 2024
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āI had long wanted to see ātrueā indigo, and thought that drugs might be the way to do this. So one sunny Saturday in 1964, I developed a pharmacologic launchpad consisting of a base of amphetamine (for general arousal), LSD (for hallucinogenic intensity), and a touch of cannabis (for a little added delirium).
About twenty minutes after taking this, I faced a white wall and exclaimed, āI want to see indigo nowānow!ā And then, as if thrown by a giant paintbrush, there appeared a huge, trembling, pear-shaped blob of the purest indigo. Luminous, numinous, it filled me with rapture: It was the color of heaven, the color, I thought, which Giotto had spent a lifetime trying to get but never achievedānever achieved, perhaps, because the color of heaven is not to be seen on earth. But it had existed once, I thoughtāit was the color of the Paleozoic sea, the color the ocean used to be. I leaned toward it in a sort of ecstasy. And then it suddenly disappeared, leaving me with an overwhelming sense of loss and sadness that it had been snatched away. But I consoled myself: Yes, indigo exists, and it can be conjured up in the brain.
For months afterward, I searched for indigo. I turned over little stones and rocks near my house, looking for it. I examined specimens of azurite in the natural history museumābut even they were infinitely far from the color I had seen.
And then, in 1965, when I had moved to New York, I went to a concert in the Egyptology gallery of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In the first half, a Monteverdi piece was performed, and I was utterly transported. I had taken no drugs, but I felt a glorious river of music, four hundred years long, flowing from Monteverdiās mind into my own. In this ecstatic mood, I wandered out during the intermission and looked at the ancient Egyptian objects on displayālapis lazuli amulets, jewelry, and so forthāand I was enchanted to see glints of indigo. I thought: Thank God, it really exists!
During the second half of the concert, I got a bit bored and restless, but I consoled myself, knowing that I could go out and take a āsipā of indigo afterward. It would be there, waiting for me. But when I went out to look at the gallery after the concert was finished, I could see only blue and purple and mauve and puceāno indigo. That was nearly fifty years ago, and I have never seen indigo again."
Jan 20, 2024
This replicates how I feel about this color even if itās an old reflection. The color purple and its multiple shades have such a rich history.
One of my favorite things is to read things about color, peopleās thoughts on it, how they describe it and their story.
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