The
Beauty
of the
Poison
Palette
By Melville Holmes
Photo credit: wuestenigel on Visualhunt / CC BY
“The point is to know how to use the colors, the choice of which is, when all’s said and done, a matter of habit. Anyway, I use
flake white, cadmium yellow, vermilion, deep madder, cobalt blue, emerald green, and that’s all.”
Claude Monet, 1905
I
n 2014 an article on the art market website
artnet.com appeared with the provocative title
“Ban on Cadmium Pigments Could Change
Art Forever.” 1 In 2013 the Swedish Chemical
Agency appealed to the European Chemical
Agency (ECHA) that the heavy metal cadmium
was spreading over agricultural land via sewage
sludge because, far-fetched as it may sound,
artists were washing their brushes in the sink and
could be polluting the food chain and increasing
the risk of cancer and other maladies. Artists
were up in arms and artists’ paint suppliers began
scrambling. The proposed ban was rejected by
the EU in October 2015, following a highly
detailed, 32-page report from the ECHA. 2 Artists
could heave a sigh of relief, at least for now; their
paint suppliers were weighing their options. One
of these has been especially busy developing
proprietary “Cadmium-Free” acrylics.
Claude Monet (1840-1926)
Bordighera
1884
Oil on canvas
25 1/2 x 32”
The Art Institute of Chicago
July | August 2019
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