*1942 in New Haven, CT (US), lives and works in New York City, NY (US)
Spencer Finch’s work revolves around the constant question of how we can perceive the world. He is particularly fascinated by daylight: ‘The sun is the ultimate goal of my work, a permanently elusive target’ (Spencer Finch). Using precise measuring instruments, he has measured the light and its coloured components in the Fox Glacier in New Zealand, for example, or at the window in Sigmund Freud’s waiting room and tried to reproduce it with coloured filters on neon tubes.
‘After Newton’ is based on the daylight in Spencer Finch’s studio, the light in which the artist himself works. In order to reproduce it in its precise composition, he encases the white neon tube with filters in the six colours that Isaac Newton defined as the constituent colours of ‘white’ light in his pioneering prism experiment.
‘Study for a Transparent Language, Index of Prussian Blue’ lists 35 names for the blue pigment that the Berlin paint manufacturer Diesbach invented over 300 years ago as the first artificially chemically produced colour. Due to its simple production, this pigment was the first inexpensive colour and it immediately gained commercial importance for oil painting and fabric dyeing. After the recipe was published in 1724, several companies began producing ‘Berlin Blue’ under many other names. While they all refer to the same widely used colour, everyone has their own idea of ‘blue’. We cannot communicate precisely about colour perceptions.
Berlin Blue is practically non-toxic and is used as an antidote for poisoning with radioactive caesium or thallium. It is on the World Health Organisation’s list of essential medicines needed in a healthcare system.