March 18, 2019 Issue

Rebecca Mead’s “The Perfect Paint,” in this week’s issue, is the latest in a line of recent New Yorker “paint” pieces. The others are Patricia Marx’s “New Shade” (January 14, 2019), Simon Schama’s “Blue as Can Be” (September 3, 2018), and Ian Frazier’s “Patina” (September 19, 2016). Which of these pieces is the most “painterly”? 

In “Perfect Paint,” Mead tells about the success of high-end English paint company Farrow & Ball. Of her visit to the company’s factory, she writes,

When I was visiting, a batch of Hague Blue was being stirred to completion. The enormous vat of paint shimmered like a luxurious pool in a Turkish hammam, and I almost wanted to climb in.

That last line is wonderfully sensuous. 

Patricia Marx, in her Talk story “New Shade,” accompanies color consultant Martin Kesselman on a tour of the home of one of his clients, Stacey Lighthouse. Marx’s description of the color of Lighthouse’s clothes made me laugh:

Lighthouse answered the door, dressed in satin trousers and a matching blouse in Visa Infinite Privilege Card blue, and enthusiastically showed Kesselman around.

Simon Schama’s “Blue as Can Be” is an account of his visit to the Forbes Collection, a color archive at Harvard University. He tells about two tubes of Mummy Brown, “made from the rendered gunk of the Egyptian dead, thought to be rich in the bituminous asphalt used in embalming and as a protection against fungal decay.” In a delightful line, he says, “There was cuttlefish sepia and burnt umber, but if Turner needed a loamy richness he reached for Mummy.”

Ian Frazier, in his superb “Patina,” describes Statue of Liberty green: “the ageless patina of the copper had a texture like extremely fine velour. Some of it shaded to a green-black, parts were dark blue, parts olive.” He says,

When you have Statue of Liberty green on the brain, you see it all around you, especially on infrastructure. Being aware of the color somehow makes the city’s bindings and conduits and linkages stand out as if they’d been injected with radioactive dye. When you look for the color, the city becomes an electric train set you’re assembling with your eyes.

All four pieces are excellent; all of them brim with color. But reviewing them today, I find one hue stands out: Statue of Liberty green.