To be immersed. To be immersed in color, through the body medium. Matisse wrote, “I must be so penetrated, so impregnated by my subject, that I can draw it with my eyes closed.” Color emanates as a primal force in the Azure of Matisse’s Mediterranean canvases, his magnificent chapel in Vence, France: “After a certain moment it is no longer me, but a revelation: all I have to do is to give myself up to it.”
As sure as a teabag is steeped, an idea saturates things, as a mind is whetted and wetted with thought, it will flow beyond itself.
The traditional tannery workers in Fès seem to be the ultimate act of immersion: could they be more immersed in color? Could they put their whole selves into their craft, crawling into vats that fill entire planes with dyes once and often still of turmeric, indigo, pomegranate, mimosa flower, saffron and indigo? Sinewy limbs stripped to the waist, having cleaned skins with limestone and softened them with pigeon guana droppings. The radical ‘70s artists who dipped their naked bodies in paint, then rolled on canvases had the same idea. To be one with. Saturate. With not an ounce of doubt or self or restraint. They are beautiful in a way that horrifies us – how is their health? Their pay, their hours? But they uphold long cultural tradition that dovetails with seeking union, here with color. I’m in.
