Last week, it was announced that our beloved Yayoi Kusama passed away on August 14th of 2026 being 97 years old.

For those who did not know her. Yayoi Kusama (1929-2026) was a pioneering Japanese contemporary artist, known for her iconic polka dots and immersive installations. She moved to New York in 1957, where she was part of the avant-garde art scene, before returning to Japan in the 70s. Her work explores themes of infinity, repetition, identity, and the relationship between the individual and the universe. In 1977 she voluntarily entered a psychiatric hospital in Tokyo after experiencing recurring panic attacks, hallucinations, and obsessive-compulsive symptoms. She chose to remain there permanently, while continuing to create art every day at a studio nearby. For Kusama, art was an important way of coping with her psychological struggles.

Kusama became famous for her instantly recognizable polka dots, pumpkins, and Infinity Mirror Rooms, which made her art visually distinctive and accessible worldwide.
Her immersive installations became hugely popular, attracting millions of visitors and younger audiences.
Her long, influential career and unique personal story also helped make her one of the most recognizable contemporary artists in the world.

Right after the news of her passing became public and openly shared, not just in the art field, but in the news all over the world (Yes, she was THAT big) I received the same question at least from four different people.

“Now that she is dead, her pieces must insanely increase in value, right?”

And I decided making this week’s newsletter about the answer, from a professional point of view.

So, the answer is yes and no.

The popular belief is that once an artist dies, the prices of their oeuvres skyrockets.
People often think this way because of Van Gogh’s case. But his oeuvres did not become popular because he died. First, he was already somewhat popular before his passing, and in second place and most importantly.

Once Vincent Van Gogh and his brother Theo (who was Van Gogh financial benefactor and art dealer) died within months , Vincent’s entire body of work passed to Johanna "Jo" van Gogh-Bonger, the wife of his brother Theo. Widow, and with an infant she needed to do something. She worked tirelessly to organize exhibitions across Europe, strategically selling and lending his paintings to turn him into a globally renowned artist. She also edited and published the heartfelt correspondence between Vincent and Theo, which helped shape the public's understanding of the artist's life and genius.

So, it wasn’t about his passing but more about his paintings being managed ingeniously what made them increase in value to the stratospheric prices we know nowadays.

This, on one side.

On the other side, common sense tells us that, after the passing of the artist, the production stops, so there’s scarcity and then the prices increase because demand is higher than supply.

But here’s a unsolicited (well, solicited by at least four people) piece of my mind.

Applying this basic law of microeconomics, supply and demand, to a blue-chip contemporary titan like Kusama reveals that the reality of what would happen is more complicated and fractured than we think.

For the "death effect" to exponentially skyrocket prices, the market must be caught off guard. Kusama died at the ripe age of 97 while literally living in a mental facility since 1977. I’m telling you, the art market has been anticipating and pricing in this transition for over a decade.

Even if she was living in a psychiatric, she was maintaining a highly structured, prolific studio operation, her secondary market was already mature. Galleries, auction houses, and major collectors have long since factored her inevitable passing into the valuation of her work. There is no hidden, sudden rush to buy; the infrastructure is already fully built. Is not like she was a art world Kurt Cobain, everyone saw this coming.

Furthermore, we must look at the sheer volume and institutional backing of her works. Unlike Van Gogh, who left behind a unmonetized body of work managed by a single estate, Kusama passes away as a global, multi-million-dollar mega-brand. She was represented by worldwide known galleries like David Zwirner and Ota Fine Arts, alongside her massive commercial partnerships (from Louis Vuitton to global museum blockbusters), her market is insanely stabilized. I’m sure her estate and representing galleries will control with swiss precision the release of any remaining inventory forgotten in a basement to prevent a sudden flood of supply that could dilute her prices.

Then, what is going to happen?

First, we must understand that there’s nothing more liquid and changing than the art market. Investing in art and having peace of mind regarding your decisions is like trusting a raccoon to guard your garbage. Is just not going to happen.

Knowing this, what follows is the humble opinion of someone who already lived and survived Botero’s death on 2023.

So, what actually happens next?

Instead of a wild price spike across the board, we will see a flight to quality. The market will become very picky.

In one side, we are going to have what is going to give A LOT of money, which is what we are going to call the Blue-Chip Masterworks.

In a nutshell, in the art field “Blue-Chip” define the body of artworks created by globally famous, historically important artists whose work almost always sells for high prices. Basically, there’s a non-existential risk when investing on this.

In Kusama’s case, her Blue-Chip Masterworks are her early, historic Infinity Nets from the late 50s and 60s, along with documented, primary-tier sculptures, will likely see value growth. Basically the oeuvres that belongs to the beginning of her career, when her production was not as abysmal, and each piece was more unique.

And, in the other side we are going to have those things that are going to stabilize in price.

In her later years, Kusama’s studio produced a vast quantity of polka-dot paintings, prints, and pumpkin sculptures to satisfy an insatiable global demand. Because this supply is relatively abundant, these pieces will see stable pricing rather than a vertical spike.

So, in a few lines for the curious ones, what the Oracle of Maria thinks is going to happen in the following years, having in consideration that, I don’t know, we figure out that she was a terrible, terrible person and separating art from artist becomes impossible like it happened to Galliano and that can completely affect this upcoming prediction.

I would say there will be mostly two moments.

First, right after her death. Attention increases. Collectors who were waiting may move and test the market, making auctions more competitive and probably you’ll see a couple of headlines featuring pumpkins, polka dots and an abysmal amount of money.

Then, in the following 2-3 years the market starts separating the wheat from the chaff. As I said before, her early career pieces would become highly popular, while her late mass produced ones most likely would decrease in value.

So, if you own a decoration store bought yellow and black pumpkin, I’m sorry to break it to you, but that still costs fifty euros.

But, if somehow you got your hands on something she did before becoming more popular than ketchup, leave whatever you are doing and contact your local art dealer or gallerist IMMEDIATELY. They’ll know how to proceed or they might faint at the potential profit, who knows.

Short and sweet, see you next week.

Going through my Google Drive I found a very rough, very old, final memoir from a subject in university. It was the year 2016 and I decided to show my passion for divination, occultism and esoteric stuff through a series of installations. One of them, a huge tarot desk, painted on sliced pieces of a cherry tree.

At that point in my life I just did it because I was deeply interested in the subject, without stopping in why and how, the tarot desk went from a renaissance game to a divination technique.

So today, I’m going back to the beginning: tarot, history, and a few references for those of us who prefer our occultism with at least a little empirical evidence.

The elusive origin of tarot has been variously traced back to India, Egypt, and to the invention of papermaking and playing cards in China in the early 12th century. It was not until the 15th century that tarot entered Europe, most likely through the ports of Venice at the height of maritime trade. Tarot, like other card games, was a product of cross-cultural exchange as they were used by merchants, traders, and sailors seeking a form of entertainment on their long voyages.

The initial name for tarot, cartes de trionfi, marks the addition of 21 triumph cards to the existing pack, which distinguishes it from regular playing cards. It was originally a trick-taking game in which stronger cards triumphed over weaker ones. Each of the triumph cards was illustrated with imagery borrowed from various aspects of the Renaissance world the players inhabited. There has been speculation that the sequence of the triumph cards, from the ignorance of The Fool card to the completion of the World card, drew heavily from the Renaissance carnival parade.

The first references to tarot cards can be traced back to the courts of Northern Italy. It is in the courts of Ferrara and Milan that we find conclusive evidence of tarot cards mentioned in public records. The term first appears in 1442 in the account books of the Este court of Ferrara. Another piece of evidence pointing to the Italian origin of the cards is a Milanese fresco from the early 1440s called The Tarocchi Players, which features five people playing cards. It is no longer possible to see the illustrations on the cards. The only reason it is known that tarot players were depicted is because of the name of the piece.

From that time there’s only three decks that survived the pass of the years. The Visconti-Sforza one being the blueprint for what we understand today as a tarot deck.

It was the most complete deck and was painted for Francesco Sforza and his wife, Bianca. Known as the Visconti-Sforza deck, it includes the Fool, nineteen trumps, and fifty-four pips. Missing from the trumps are the Devil and the Tower, while six cards appear to have been added later. The surviving cards are split between the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo and the Morgan Library & Museum in New York.

But it wasn’t until the 18th century that the function of the tarot cards changed dramatically. In France, during the Enlightment, cartomancy began to take root, and the tarot, with its rich imagery, was reimagined under the guidance of several influential figures of the occult.

And here is where the thing becomes messy and juicy.

In 1781, a French clergyman and Freemason named Antoine Court de Gébelin published a massive essay in his multi-volume work, Le Monde Primitif.

And what did he say there that changed completely tarot from game to divination technique? Brace yourselves, because our guy Antoine was the founder father of delulu. The problem wasn't that Antoine was lying. The problem was that he was spectacularly confident about something he couldn't possibly have known.

He instantly concluded upon first seeing a Tarot de Marseille deck, that the cards were not a game, but rather the bound remains of the lost Book of Thoth, containing ancient Egyptian high magic smuggled to Europe by priests.

All of this COMPLETELY fabricated and with the same veracity as Trump’s statements. Because at the time, the Rosetta Stone had not yet been deciphered, making it impossible to actually read Egyptian hieroglyphics. But well, Antoine did not count with the knowledge of the language of the pharaohs, but with a wild, broad and unstoppable imagination.

A French merchant turned fortune-teller named Jean-Baptiste Alliette, working under the pseudonym Etteilla, took Antoine's intellectual theories and turned them into a commercial reality. And in 1783, Etteilla published the very first book giving specific divinatory meanings (both upright and reversed) to each of the 78 tarot cards.

Finding standard playing decks inadequate, he designed and published the first deck explicitly made for divination. He restructured the deck to tell a story of the creation of the cosmos, society, and the individual. Etteilla was the first to assign astrological correspondences to the major arcana and the first to explicitly print the number 0 on the Fool card.

In Etteilla Foundation Website, you can take a look at the very first deck in question, called “Le Jeu de Toth” and, even if you don’t believe in the divination capacity of these cards, you can appreciate the work of the famous engraver Pierre-François Basan. Which is exquisite.

Actually, the entire website is a place to witness for those who are interested either in tarot, illustration, card games or the history of all of it. You can also find there a deck dating from the year 1661 that resembles the most to the original shape of a tarot deck before its mystic new meaning.

In 1855, French occultist Éliphas Lévi integrated tarot as a single master system of Western esotericism. (I’d love to make a small incission, now that I am reading about all this occult men. The pipeline from dropout cleric to cartomancer should be studied widely, because there’s not a single occultist that did not want to be a catholic priest before).

Doing as well a few new arrangements that tarot’s been carrying until nowadays.

Lévi firmly mapped the 22 Major Arcana cards to the 22 paths of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life and the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. He assigned the four suits of the Minor Arcana to the four letters of the Hebrew name for God (YHVH) and the four classical elements (Earth, Air, Fire, Water). He re-imagined the “Le Bateleur” (The Juggler) from the older Tarot de Marseille into The Magician, an adept commanding the elemental tools on his altar.

All of these changes with zero scientific support. Just vibes.

By the late 19th century, the center of tarot development shifted from France to England, driven by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, founded in 1888. Members were required to hand-copy the secret tarot decks of the Order as part of their magical initiation.

I can’t take this serious, but I’m doing this for you guys.

When I did the tarot deck I was an ignorant and I really thought that tarot had a more solid base than this. But hey, I got a ten, so that counts as something.

Let’s keep moving.

In December 1909, two former Golden Dawn members, Arthur Edward Waite and artist Pamela Colman Smith, published a deck that changed tarot forever.

Before 1909, the Minor Arcana looked like standard playing cards (e.g., just ten cups on a page). Smith illustrated every single card with narrative scenes, making the deck intuitive for anyone to read without memorization.

So now, the tarot deck went from an occult, mysterious, impossible to decipher tool to tell the future, to a tool that everyone could use. Give it to the people. Everyone is a cartomancer now.

All of this to tell you about the fantastic reinterpretations that the tarot deck has gone through the 20th and 21st centuries.

Because something we can’t forget is that the tarot deck was born in the art cradle, not in the occult one. The earliest 15th-century Visconti-Sforza decks were luxury, hand-painted masterpieces commissioned by Renaissance nobility to showcase their wealth and taste, not an obscure way of telling the future. That was pure delusion.

Doing a tarot deck as a congratulated artist is the ultimate portfolio exercise. You have a structure to follow, topics you have to cover maintaining a consistent visual language, colour palette and voice. Probably that’s why so many artists decided to take a chance on it.

One of the big ones was Salvador Dalí.

In 1973, film producer Albert Broccoli commissioned Dalí to design a custom tarot deck as a prop for the James Bond film Live and Let Die. When the agreement fell through over Dalí's high financial demands, the artist continued working on the project out of passion, eventually completing the full series of gouache paintings and publishing the deck in limited numbers in 1984.

I have to say that, despite hating Dalí with a passion (as a person, because he was, to say the least, questionable, grey morals in the worst possible way). I would if I could buy one of those original decks because they’re fantastic and a joy to look at.

The fact that he used the figure of Don Quixote to depict The Fool it’s probably my favorite part.

And putting himself as The Magician, I don’t know if he was a narcissist or very much aware of how good he was.

Before Dalí, another fantastic surrealist took her chance on the tarot desk.

Leonora Carrington created around 1955, 22 hand-painted cards depicting the Major Arcana, brilliantly fusing traditional Tarot of Marseille iconography with alchemy, sorcery, myth, and her signature animal-human hybrids. Though created in mid-century, the deck remained hidden in her personal collection until it was publicly showcased during her 2018 centennial retrospective, Magical Tales, in Mexico. A big thank you to that curator.

This deck in particular, to me, showcases who Leonora Carrington is, as an artist in a exquisite way. Perhaps done as a exercise and not as a commission, she let herself create as freely as possible, coming up with 22 pieces with more mystical and magical meaning than many of her most famous pieces.

Still, to this day, tarot decks are depicted by contemporary artists on a regular basis. Contemporary artists have stretched tarot’s expressive possibilities even beyond the Surrealist imagination previously mentioned. They have adapted the tarot deck to tell stories of people, histories, and spiritualities previously unseen in the canonical decks.

A specific one I’d like to mention on this newsletter is Courtney Alexander’s Dust II Onyx: A Melanated Tarot (2017).

Alexander admired the way tarot managed to combine symbolism from across spiritual traditions, but was aware that, as an African American woman, she did not see herself represented in the cards. So she created a deck that incorporates a wide range of figures from the African diaspora, from popular-culture icons such as Grace Jones along with images of the Mursi and Maasai peoples of East Africa.

Being ambitious and going further than creating the first tarot deck exclusively done by a black artist. In 2024 she published “Tarot Through the Spiral” a groundbreaking tarot system and educational methodology that integrates Central and West African cosmology with Black Indigenous thought.

This method rejects strict traditional paths (like the straight line from the Fool to the World) and views spiritual evolution as an expanding and folding spiral where readers circle back, reflect, and reorient.

Outside of believing or not in this practice, The Spiral is a great method to reflect and learn about oneself and how did one person ends up in the situation and context they are. Also giving tools, not necessarily within the divination realm if you don’t believe in it, but on the self grow one, which is tremendously valuable.

Probably, reading about Alexander’s Spiral, I realized that perhaps the real magic of tarot does not resides in telling us the future, but being the perfect excuse to inventing new ways to tell us something about ourselves.

I don’t know.

In my case I was tremendously fascinated about occultism because could be a way of figuring out what is going to happen next and that would help the crippling anxiety of someone who had no idea of what was going on. Or at least giving you the delusion of it, until you are slightly older and less unhinged and discover that the best way to proceed is to improvise.

As a foot note, for you who are lucky and read this from New York City, there’s this incredible and beautiful exhibition about Tarot in The Morgan Library and Museum.

They have part of the Visconti-Sforza deck previously mentioned and many more from other artists. On Friday the access is free, just so you know.

See you next week.

Because it does not look dead either.

To that, add pitch black hair, and a tendency to the infamous “resting bitch face”. And you’ve got it, you look like a casual-modern-day-chic vampire. That’s how I look, unironically.

But today, while willingly not applying bronzer or blush because finally I gave myself permission to look sick. I wondered why, in first instance I like to look like someone who is not alive.

And I could not recall a moment where I did not like it.

First, I am not a naturally tan person, sure, if I go and sunbathe for two hours I tan super quickly, but naturally I am pale. Like, sick looking pale. But not super white, or rosy cheeks, no, my skin looks like wax. Like a mortuary mask.

Probably because of that I joined the vampire trope quite early on. I could relate more physically with the undead than Disney princesses.

There was this cartoon, called “Zitbag’s transylvania pet shop” that I would watch being a small kid, where one of the main characters was a vampiric-Frankenstein bride esque girl. Who, to me was extremely cool and pretty. And that, together with the Addams Family movies, formed what I understood as beautiful, powerful and the canon I aspired to.
As I’ve said before, I always have been attracted towards dark and unsettling themes. Raised catholic, I was always attracted to those things that, without further explanation more than they were sinful, were forbidden.

But as soon as I had age enough to navigate the web and create a Tumblr account, I figured out I was not alone in this.
People love the undead, despite all the red flags. We want to be like them, consumed by them. Especially women.

But, when did this start? When did vampires go from fearsome creatures to object of desire? When did we want to become one of them?

Let’s talk about it.

Lamias, were probably the blueprint for what we understand nowadays as “vampire”.
In Greek mythology, a Lamia was a monstrous, child-eating queen cursed by Hera into a bloodthirsty creature with the torso of a woman and the lower body of a serpent. In later folklore, the term evolved to describe a class of seductive, shape-shifting spirits that lured young men to drain their blood and life force.

So how did we go from half snake seductresses to undead corpses with more sex appeal than Hugh Jackman? The answer is the Vrykolakas.

The Vrykolakas is a bloated, un-decayed human corpse possessed by a demon that returns from its grave to terrorize its former village. It stalks the night, knocking on doors exactly once to call out names, causing anyone who answers to sicken and die.

This sounds more familiar, right?

I am aware that I am treating this with Darwinian importance, but hear me out.

The leap from a bloated, corpse to the elegant, fanged aristocrat we know today happened in the 18th and 19th centuries.

It was driven by a real-world historical event: the Habsburg Empire’s expansion, which brought Eastern European folklore directly into the hands of Western scientists and novelists.

In the early 1700s, Austria seized territories in Serbia and Northern Greece. Austrian soldiers and medical officers encountered villages gripped by mass hysteria over creatures like the Vrykolakas.

This is so cool because literally the planets aligned.

The mass vampire hysteria of the 18th century in these areas, wasn't just random superstition; it was a storm of unexplained contagious diseases, a total misunderstanding of how human bodies decompose, and a massive clash of cultures.

Before the discovery of germ theory in the late 1800s, people had no idea how viruses or bacteria spread. When diseases like tuberculosis or the plague hit a village, people wasted away and died very fast, usually starting within the same family. Because the illness felt like your energy was being slowly drained, villagers assumed the first person who died was reaching out from the grave to pull their relatives down with them.

When panicked villagers dug up suspected vampires, they were looking at something genuinely horrifying but interpreting it through a completely different understanding of death. Bodies change after death. Gases build up, skin retracts, fluids move. Hair and nails can appear to grow, and a stake stabbed into a swollen chest can release trapped gases with a noise that sounds like a groan.

To us, these are signs of decomposition. To someone who genuinely believed the dead could return from the afterlife? You tell me what that looked like.

The hysteria exploded globally because it became an administrative problem for the Austrian Habsburg Empire. When Austria occupied the Balkan borderlands, educated military doctors documented local peasants digging up graves to stake corpses. These clinical reports were leaked to Western European newspapers, where the public viewed the accounts as breaking scientific news, turning a local panic into a continent-wide sensation.

I’m chuckling while writing this because this is exactly the historical blueprint for what we call sensationalist media, clickbait, and fake news today.

The 18th-century vampire panic is widely considered by historians to be one of the world’s first true mass media hoaxes. The mechanisms used back then are identical to modern media manipulation.

But circling back to the vampires.

Western European writers took these undead corpses from the medical reports and completely reinvented them for literature. Because rotting piece of flesh does not sell as much just like that.

I know you guys are thinking about Dracula, but before him there were a few refined undead corpses.

In 1819, John Polidori's The Vampyre introduced the first aristocratic, charming, and seductive vampire, Lord Ruthven, inspired by Lord Byron. Shifting the monster from graveyards to high society, the story redefined the creature as a wealthy, cynical predator who targeted women, rather than peasants. Later, in 1872 Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu writes Carmilla. Set in an isolated Austrian castle, it follows a lonely young woman named Laura who falls under the spell of Carmilla, a mysterious and passionate houseguest. As Laura grows weaker from a strange, illness, she discovers that her alluring friend is actually a shape-shifting, centuries-old vampire.

Those two sound more familiar already.

And now, finally, the reference, the myth, Dracula.

Written in 1897 by Bram Stoker, it is the definitive masterpiece of vampire literature, transforming the folklore monster into a global cultural phenomenon and establishing the modern rules of vampire mythos.

I’m sure everyone here read Dracula or saw the movies or heard about it, but just in case, a brief, brief synopsis.

Solicitor Jonathan Harker is imprisoned in a Transylvanian castle by Count Dracula, who then travels to England to terrorize London and prey on Lucy Westenra, who transforms into a creature of the night. Professor Van Helsing and a group of allies, including Jonathan and his wife Mina, hunt the Count after he creates a psychic bond with Mina, culminating in a final showdown at his castle.

But why did Dracula hit harder than Carmilla or The Vampyre?

Honestly, while The Vampyre and Carmilla are brilliant, Dracula just operated on a completely different scale. The earlier stories are very intimate, dreamlike Gothic tales where the vampire targets a single household or a small social circle. Stoker changed the game by turning Dracula into a huge geopolitical threat. Instead of just creeping around isolated castles, Dracula buys real estate all over London, plans an invasion to feast on the heart of the British Empire. This hit perfectly into Victorian “invasion anxiety,” making the danger feel widespread and apocalyptic.

What really made it hit home for readers in 1897 was how modern it felt. Stoker brought this ancient, evil into contemporary London and pinned it against “cutting-edge” technology. The heroes use typewriters, phonograph recordings and telegrams to hunt him down, creating a contrast between primordial terror and modern science. Also, because the book is written as a collection of “real” diaries, letters, and newspaper clippings, it felt like a quite compelling new instead of a fantastic story. Bram Stoker also sets the rules, he gave audiences the imagery they could easily remember and replicate: the garlic, the crucifix, the transformation into bats, the vulnerability to daylight, and the stakes through the heart.

But Dracula did something even more important than establishing the rules of vampire mythology. He made the vampire desirable.

I think part of it is that vampires turn our greatest fears into desirable qualities.

They don’t age, don’t get sick, don’t lose their beauty. They are powerful, mysterious, sexually desirable, and completely outside the rules of the ordinary human being.

Literally, a vampire takes the thing that scares us humans the most and makes it desirable. Death is not the end of the way, but a new beginning. Far from rooting, decay and disappear, you become powerful and more beautiful than you’ve ever been.

And then there is the appeal of being the monster rather than the victim.

As a woman there’s a strange satisfaction in being able to walk around in the mist of the night without being afraid of predators, because being a vampire gives you the power of splitting them like a dry branch.

I think the fact that women are more attracted to this idea has a deeper meaning.

I am not going to dive into the romantic or sexual allure of the vampire because I think it’s quite clear and has been talked about many times.

But, the allure of becoming the vampire.

As a woman, becoming the vampire means stopping worrying about all the rules and demands society puts on us.

As a vampire you don’t have to fear aging because the clock stopped the day you were turned into. You don’t have to fear illness because you are above natural laws. You don’t have to fear rejection because you are designed to attract. You don’t have to pretend you are child-minded and free of lustful thoughts, because it is part of your allure.

As a vampire you just don’t avoid death. You avoid the things that make being a woman frightening. You don't have to make yourself smaller, softer, prettier or more approachable.

I think that’s why the vampire has remained so compelling for women. The fantasy isn’t simply that someone dangerous might want you. It’s that you could become the dangerous thing.

So obviously I am aware of the impossibility of becoming a vampire, but no one is going to stop me from looking like one.

And I thought. What if I do a weekly newsletter? And take it seriously for once?

Once a week I will choose a topic, I will talk about it,walk you through it and I will give you references, not necessarily in a list, but scattered through the text. They can be, other painters, movies, exhibitions, music, you never know.
I don’t pretend to follow a theme and when I talk about art, I talk about all disciplines, even those outside the traditional gallery walls. So if one day the thing is about high cousine, you were warned.

So, welcome to The Art Dispatch.

Opening this newsletter. Let’s talk about Francis Bacon.

Francis Bacon (1909–1992) was an Irish-born British figurative painter known for his raw, unsettling, and deeply visceral imagery. He became one of the most powerful and celebrated artists of the 20th century, famous for capturing human trauma, alienation, and existential dread.

But we all know all of those technical details. So, let’s go deeper.

The reason I decided to write about him was the play Buggers. A new play tracing the volatile relationship between him and his lover and muse George Dyer.

The play will be running at Pleasance Courtyard through August 30th. So whoever reading this from Edinburgh, or planning to be there by that time, you should attend the play and write me a review, thank you very much.

As many other artists, Bacon’s life, even if its start was between cottons, soon became tumultuous. Coming from a traditional catholic Irish family. His atheism, homosexuality and explosive fights with his conservative father, forced him to leave home at the age of 16, in 1926.

In 1927, on a desperate try from his father to “Iron out” his son, he sent him to Berlin with a relative. Instead, the relative took advantage of the situation, and the trip introduced Bacon to the uninhibited, hedonistic lifestyle of Weimar-era Germany. The city exposed him to European cinema, Fritz Lang's films (go and watch Metropolis, it’s an order), and underground clubs. This raw cocktail of sexual freedom and societal decay heavily shaped the dark psychological undertones of his future artwork.

By 1928 he moved to France, and a trip to Paris was the pivotal moment of his life. He visited a landmark exhibition of Pablo Picasso’s work at the Galerie Paul Rosenberg. And he was so moved by it that well, he decided to be a painter too.

For those curious of the content of that exhibition, I did a bit of research.
The pieces exhibited there where those that belong to Picasso’s “Magic Paintings” era.

Picasso shifted from intellectual Cubism into raw, subconscious Surrealism. Influenced by African ritual masks and Freudian psychology, he treated these canvases as spiritual, shamanic objects to map human emotion rather than physical reality. Characterized by radical bodily distortions and encrypted symbols, this period is highly important because it directly created the violent visual vocabulary Picasso later used to paint his ultimate masterpiece, Guernica.

Imagine being 18, in search of who you are as a individual and casually run into this exhibition. I do understand the epiphany.

Picasso’s radical, bone-like bodily distortions showed Bacon that art could bypass normal illustration to violently shock the viewer’s nervous system. By mutating the human form, Picasso proved that mutating an image could reveal a deeper psychological truth, a technique Bacon adopted to create his own famous, screaming masterpieces.

So, now we have his style. Now, let’s go to the lore.

When Francis Bacon settled back in London, his personal life became an intense, chaotic mix of societal danger, violent romance, and wartime trauma.

Living as a criminalized gay man in mid-century Britain, he actively sought out violent, sado-masochistic relationships that blurred the lines between pleasure and pain. Tasked with pulling severed body parts from bombed rubble during the London Blitz, he became obsessed with the human form as raw, vulnerable meat. And, as if that wasn’t enough, his two great loves, a violent ex-fighter pilot and a troubled petty thief, both died tragically from alcoholism and suicide, leaving Bacon consumed by lifelong guilt and grief.

But obviously all of this catastrophe inspired him, making him on of the biggest visual artists of the 20th century. I’m not going to discuss if it worth it or not. I don’t really enjoy the pipeline tortured genius becomes acclaimed artist. But is there.

All of this to go back to the play Buggers.

Surprisingly there’s not that much media about this artist. And with media I mean movies or plays. The only one I found is called Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon, a 1998, biographical drama about his romance with George Dyer. So Hollywood and wannabe that those in charge of Bacon’s memory banned the director of using his paintings in the film. I have watched it, and you can do better with those two hours of your life.

The production of Buggers is the first to receive research access from the Estate of Francis Bacon, which allowed the director to draw on personal documents, letters, and artifacts in developing the script.

Structured as a triptych, echoing the artwork format Bacon used throughout his career, the play unfolds across three fractured time periods, rather than following a linear timeline.
It opens with the pair’s first night together in 1963, when Bacon, already an internationally acclaimed painter, became consumed by Dyer, a charismatic East End petty criminal half his age. As Bacon painted him more than any other subject, Dyer grew increasingly dependent on the world of fame and excess that Bacon offered him. The play builds toward Dyer’s death in a Paris hotel room in 1971, from an overdose of barbiturates and alcohol, two days before the opening of Bacon’s retrospective at the Grand Palais. Seems like it was a trendy way to go during those years. Forgive the frivolity.

Inspired by Bacon’s painting language but able to write his own dictionary. I’d like to recommend George Rouy (England, 1994).

In Conversation: George Rouy and Nikolaj Schultz

Rouy is a contemporary painter whose distorted, fluid figures explore the instability of the human body and identity. His work combine psychological intensity with sensuality and abstraction.

I had the opportunity of seeing some of Rouy’s pieces in the 20th anniversary, of the gallery V1 in Copenhagen. And even if his paintings can look Bacon-esque at first glance, they feel much more sensual, fluid and contemporary once you spend time with them.

Seriously, George Rouy is one of the few contemporary artists that happen to have a similar visual language than a previous big artist, without falling into the copycat category. He is growing like a weed, and completely deserved.

Bacon also escaped the canvas. Nick Cave has spoken about being obsessed with Bacon as a young painter, until he realized he was making “bad Bacons” and abandoned painting (thank god for that exercise of humbleness that gave us a great musician and saved us from a Adrien Brody who is a great actor but wants to be a great painter too and the process is been a shitshow so far). It’s tempting to think that he simply changed mediums. But the Baconian universe, violence, sex, death, religion, grotesque beauty, totally followed him into music.

If you want to hear what I am talking about, listen to his album Murder Ballads. To me, that’s how Bacon sounds like.

Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds – Murder Ballads-Full Album

Anyway. That’s it for Bacon.

See you next week.

And please, if you go see Buggers, tell me if it’s any good. I have delegated the research.

Literally.

For those who does not know who Isabella Blow was, you are welcome in advance.

Isabella Blow was a British aristocrat, fashion bloodhound, she was known and celebrated for discovering new fashion talents and being a trend setter herself.

She was that girl before the concept was a washed out trend.

Without this woman probably we would not have THE Alexander McQueen.

She showed up in his MA design showcase in 1992, and after harassing his mum with phone calls, became his mentor and confidant, an unofficial incubator of his talent, pouring money into him.

Without Blow the world would have never seen Shalom Harlow in a virginal white dress being spray painted by two industrial gun painting machines. Symbolizing the conflict between humans and machines, using the destruction of Harlow’s pristine dress to question technology, control and traditional ideas of beauty. The performance also showed fashion as transformation and art, rather than simply clothing. This happened in 1998. Way ahead of his time if you ask me.

I think Isabella appeared in my dreams to tell me to go ahead and not be afraid to talk about Alexander McQueen as potentially my favorite artist between all disciplines. Academics can kiss my ass. He was an art genius, the only problem is that is medium was fashion. But the understanding, talent and vision that man had about materials, shapes and concepts was way more brilliant than any visual artist of his time. Fuck you Damien Hirst.

If an artist can use sculpture, installation, performance, materials, the body, technology and symbolism to communicate an idea, why does the fact that McQueen did all of those things through clothing disqualify him from being considered an artist?

Perhaps the problem is not that fashion lacks the intellectual or creative qualities of art, but that our definition of art has historically been too narrow to understand them when they appear on a body rather than on a gallery wall.

Fashion is always been a big interest of mine. Having quite rather quirky style since I was a small kid. I would fight my mum and throw fits over a garment not being green enough. I was the only “emo kid” in my school and comments never stopped me but made me be even more unhinged. By the age of 18 I would wear insane velvet platforms to university despite being, myself, shy of measuring 1,80 meters. Would wear elaborate editorial makeups to the lectures and I would blend so many styles that no category or urban tribe could hold me.

It was about this age when I discovered who Alexander McQueen was, followed by Isabella Blow and incredible fashion artists she sponsored like Philip Treacy.

Being bombarded with constant references all the time. Contemporary artists and performance artists, I could not understand why fashion designers like McQueen, Galliano or Treacy were not in the same prestige boat.

These designers’ pieces and collections are sculptural, pictorial and performance masterpieces as much as any other visual art product.
My brain still cannot wrap around the idea of Hirst’s dots being art museum worthy and Philip Treacy’s hats not. Like, have you guys seen those hats without the bigotry glasses on?

Or, again, I love Marina Abramovich with all my heart but why is “Rhythm 0” (1974) a great performance and "Highland Rape" collection by Alexander McQueen not? Both of them have a incredibly strong motive and impact on the viewer.

Both works deliberately make the viewer uncomfortable. Both use violence, vulnerability, the body, gender, historical trauma, and the viewer's own complicity. Both can be accused of aestheticizing suffering. And both depend heavily on the audience's reaction to complete the work.

But here guys, is where art theory becomes juicy and useful.

And Bourdieu is going to help us understand.

Bourdieu wanted to show that our judgments about what is “high art,” “low art,” sophisticated, vulgar, serious, or frivolous are socially produced. In “Distinction” (1979), he argues that taste is connected to social class and cultural capital. What looks like “natural” good taste is something people learn through education, upbringing, institutions, and social environments.

In a nutshell, Bourdieu's point is that what we experience as obviously good, serious, sophisticated art is produced through education and cultural institutions. Museums, critics, academies, collectors, galleries, etc, teach us what deserves prestige. And historically, those institutions were overwhelmingly shaped by male dominated cultural structures, while things associated with femininity, domesticity, consumption, decoration, clothing and the body were often positioned lower in the cultural hierarchy.

Even if I was a fashion lover I used to think like that too. Limiting fashion to trends and garment without seeing the potential, with the fear of being considered myself by other peers frivolous, dumb or not serious at all.

They taught us to be a bunch of sexists snobs and we are letting them! A bunch of men with tiny round glasses and elbow patch jackets are telling us what to like and to think from beyond the grave!

Thank God that one of my teachers dropped on my table “The Empire of Fashion” by Gilles Lipovetsky and gave me the permission to defend this argument with nails and teeth.

In “The Empire of Fashion”, Lipovetsky argues that fashion is not simply a superficial decoration added to society. It is deeply connected to modern individualism: the desire to change, differentiate ourselves, experiment with identity and constantly reinvent who we are. Fashion is one of the places where the modern individual gets to perform the self.

So, my ridiculous velvet platforms and editorial makeup goes further than mere looks.

What I was doing was not simply “dressing weird.” I was experimenting with identity through appearance, mixing references and making my body into a moving image.

If fashion is one of the ways modern individuals construct and communicate themselves, then a designer who transforms the body into a place of narrative, symbolism, violence, beauty and performance is doing something more complicated than making clothes. He is working with one of the oldest artistic materials there is, the human body.

And the person who understood this perfectly was Isabella Blow. She came from exactly the kind of world that teaches you what “high art” is supposed to look like. Museums, galleries, old masters, inherited taste, all of it. And yet she looked at fashion and saw the artistic value there instead.

Even if my specialty is Modern and Contemporary Art, I have the softest spot for Romanticism. That’s why Gustave Doré has his own room in my heart. There’s nothing like a dramatic, gothic, theatrical depiction of something.

I discovered him very early, even before formally studying art. I was reading the Divine Comedy, and his illustrations blew my mind in the most delicious way.

I would say my favorite illustration of his was his depiction of Satan from John Milton’s Paradise Lost.

Having in consideration that both Paradise Lost and the Divine Comedy are, by far, my favorite epic poems, figuring out that Doré illustrated both skyrocketed him into my top five artists immediately.

As every culturally Catholic person, I have a special interest in Hell. I love to talk about it, ask people if they believe in it, and generally investigate what people imagine when they think about it. And my perception of Hell was heavily influenced by Doré’s illustrations.

As a kid, I grew up thinking the devil, Satan, was this tiny red man with fangs and wings who would punish me for eternity if I skipped church on a Sunday.

But that definition changed after reading Paradise Lost, which I did at the rebellious age of fourteen.

By that time, my believing-and-fearing-God days were pretty much over. I was going through that sweet period where I would rebel against EVERYTHING. I didn’t care whether it was religion, authority, or whatever comment happened to be a little too traditional.

And then I saw in John Milton’s Satan a mirror.

LET ME EXPLAIN.

Paradise Lost is controversial because it portrays Satan with such charismatic, tragic heroism that many readers have felt that Milton accidentally made the Devil the hero.

Satan is given sweeping speeches, epic resilience, and a tragic sense of lost majesty that mirrors a political revolutionary:

The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n.

What matter where, if I be still the same,

And what I should be, all but less than he

Whom thunder hath made greater?

Here at least We shall be free:

th’Almighty hath not built

Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:

Here we may reign secure, and in my choice

To reign is worth ambition, though in hell;

Better to reign in hell than serve in heav’n.

Excuse me?

This was pure fuel.

Satan was the ultimate underdog here. He frames his rebellion against an omnipotent God as a noble struggle for liberty and self-determination.

I was fourteen, rebellious, suspicious of authority, already detached from religion, and suddenly Milton gave me this magnificent character saying, essentially: I would rather suffer in freedom than submit to an authority I don’t recognize.

Of course that hit me like a truck.

Now, obviously, reading Paradise Lost with the morally superior adult that I am, I realize how much of the first part of the epic is actually the depiction Satan has of himself, and how, throughout the story, we see his manipulative and narcissistic nature.

But as a teenager, I saw myself as this extremely complex individual whom no one understood and whom everyone was against.

Thank God I am now aware that this is a universal teenage experience and have escaped the snowflake jail.

Though, still, I am immensely attracted to everything that has a hidden or dark side.

And for me, Doré’s illustrations have always had a very dark undertone. As if he understood the darkness of the things he was illustrating firsthand.

His darkness does not feel merely artistic or gothic. In all his works, from the Divine Comedy to Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, his depictions of despair, poverty, desolation, suffering, and the Sublime itself feel a little too familiar.

Even when the scenes are fantastical or biblical, his figures can feel psychologically caught rather than simply depicted.

There’s something about Doré that makes me feel as if he wasn’t merely illustrating these stories. He had been there.

In this illustration, which belongs to the Divine Comedy, Dante and Virgil see a headless figure approaching them, holding his own head by the hair like a lantern.

The sinner is Bertran de Born, a Provençal poet who, according to Dante, encouraged the rebellion of Prince Henry against his father, Henry II of England. His punishment is to carry his own severed head, separated from his body in the same way he is said to have separated father from son.

The last line of Canto XXVIII mentions contrapasso, which is, simply put, the idea that the punishment should correspond to the crime. Dante is devoted to this concept.

And in this illustration, we can see the emotions overflow.

Dante’s sadness. Virgil’s rejection. The pure desperation and despair of those whose lives were destroyed by conflict. The contortions of the bodies. The suffering.

Doré was there somehow and witnessed it, through an astral dream or whatever esoteric way. He was the third traveler there.

Until three days ago, I knew Doré primarily as the haunting illustrator of both my favorite epic poems.

Then, while doing a little research, I discovered that he also illustrated Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven.

And I literally jumped back.

Because HOW did he do that and I had no idea, when loving The Raven is part of who I am?

For those who live under a stone, The Raven is one of the most famous poems of Edgar Allan Poe.

Poe writes about a grieving man, alone at midnight, lamenting the loss of his beloved Lenore. A talking raven flies into his room and perches upon a bust of Pallas Athena. To every increasingly agonizing question the man asks about death, loss, and hope, the bird replies only: “Nevermore.”

The man slowly descends into madness, realizing that his grief is not going anywhere.

But let me tell you why The Raven is not just another Victorian ghost story.

Poe intentionally wrote the poem in trochaic octameter, a rare and driving rhythm that creates an almost hypnotic pulse. Combined with intense internal rhyme and alliteration, the poem, because it is a story and a poem, begs to be read out loud. It creates an addictive, spellbinding melody that sticks in your head.

You tell me. I can recite it from bottom to top on command.

Weird party trick.

Unlike a traditional ghost story, the true terror in The Raven happens almost entirely inside the protagonist’s mind. The narrator knows, or at least initially understands, that the bird is simply repeating a meaningless phrase it may have learned from a previous owner.

Yet, driven by grief, he keeps asking it increasingly painful questions. He essentially weaponizes his own grief against himself.

The despair in the poem felt incredibly real because Poe wrote it while his own young wife, Virginia, was slowly dying of tuberculosis. Readers could sense the genuine, raw desperation of a man staring into an unavoidable loss.

And again I wonder: how did Doré know what that room would look like?

Even before The Simpsons?

How many more of you had The Simpsons as your first exposure to Poe? I’m genuinely curious.

I clearly remember the autumn afternoon when, while having lunch, I saw that episode as a kid, and it never left my head. A couple of years later, I read Tales of Mystery and Imagination for my English class, and it became my thing.

Being brooding, dark, obsessive and weird since very young.

My uncle apparently predicted the kind of person I was going to become because, when I was very young, perhaps even a toddler, he gave me the nickname “Miércoles,” which means Wednesday in Spanish, because of how much I apparently looked and acted like the Addams Family girl.

But circling back.

I know for a fact that the similarities between Gustave Doré and Edgar Allan Poe’s lives are striking, as both men were dark romantic figures who suffered deep emotional unfulfillment, struggled with the loss of maternal figures, and became prisoners of their own creative geniuses.

Funny enough, Doré’s very last project before his death was the series of steel-plate illustrations for "The Raven", that was,one of Poe’s last work as well.

That makes me think if the key for their talent to depict those things that are dark and hidden so accurately, it’s their tragic lives. Fueling somehow this romantic idea of the “tortured genius”. I don’t know.

I don’t actually believe suffering makes anyone a better artist. If anything, I think that idea romanticizes something that is often simply painful.

Perhaps the real gift is the ability to look at darkness, whether it is your own, someone else’s, or something imagined centuries before you were born, and understand it well enough to give it a shape.

Every woman I know have wanted to be a fairy, nymph, witch or even a deer at some point of her life.
I am not necessarily talking about the increase of videos under the hashtag “cottagecore”. But more about the fact that my running route passes through small patches of nature and forest instead of a straight pavement. Even if it would be easier to run on the second.

If we go back in time we can see that the firsts depictions of gods and goddesses align with what I am saying.
Nature is been always a feminine entity.
Already during antique Greek times, the goddess of Earth was Gaia.

Gaia was born from the primordial Chaos, with no father or progenitor, neither a masculine energy, she gave birth to the sky, earth, oceans and primordial lines of Gods by herself.

She was regarded not just as a deity ruling a domain, but as the living physical earth itself.

But it does not stops there. The figures that appear again and again in mythology and art: nymphs, sirens, witches, dryads, goddesses, mermaids, fairies.

They live at the edges of civilization, in forests, rivers, caves, mountains, oceans and gardens. They represent something outside of the orderly human world.And indeed, they are feminine.

The Greek nymph is probably one of the clearest examples. Nymphs were spirits associated with particular elements and landscapes. They weren’t simply women who lived in nature. They were nature itself.

A dryad wasn’t a woman standing next to a tree, she was the tree.

The feminine body has historically been understood through a similar relationship with nature. Not necessarily because women are somehow more "natural" than men, but because the female body has always made biological processes unusually visible.

Menstruation, ovulation, pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding or menopause.

And this has shaped how women have been perceived, sometimes in a romantic way or in a utterly oppressive way.

Women have been called natural, intuitive, irrational, fertile, wild, nurturing, dangerous. Which, funny enough it’s the same language that has been used to describe nature.

Perhaps ancient societies looked at the fact that women could literally grow another human being inside their bodies and drew a symbolic parallel with the earth growing plants, crops and forests.A woman’s body moves through cycles as the natural world moves through seasons. And so the woman becomes a small version of the world around her. Microcosm and macrocosm.

I swear I did not smoke anything.

Because if this is only an ancient metaphor that societies imposed onto women, why does the fantasy of returning to nature still feel so compelling to so many women today?

Perhaps part of the answer is that civilization has historically been defined in a dicotomy. The city versus the wilderness, culture versus nature, reason versus instinct, order versus chaos, and all that Hegelian crap.

And, historically, men have often been associated with the first side of these binaries while women have been pushed toward the second. And I also promise you this affirmation was not done by a woman. Ever.

For centuries, saying that women were closer to nature was also a way of saying that women were less rational and more emotional. The same idea that can sound mystical and beautiful today, has historically been used to restrict women.

Menstruation was treated as impurity, pregnancy became a justification for excluding women from public life, emotionalism was presented as proof of intellectual inferiority, female sexuality was simultaneously feared and controlled, the woman was natural, and nature, in the Western imagination, was something that civilization was supposed to conquer.

Ask Francis Bacon, the guys was very convinced of this.

So perhaps the entire point of this yearning for becoming nature itself is a way of owning with pride what was once a pejorative comparison.

Ana Mendieta gives us an artistic practice where that desire becomes literal.

All of this mental gymnastics, just to talk about a fantastic artist who, even if increasingly popular, still deserves so much more clout.

The first time I heard about her was in university, in a strange yet fulfilling subject called “Art and Body”. Our teacher was insane in the best of ways, and his teaching methods oscillated between excruciating theoretical classes about performance artists, to lay down on the floor while he was playing the Tibetan singing bowl and asked us which animal were we seeing if we closed our eyes. He would bring dried rose petals as a snack, and was the first person who told me, very seriously, that my aura was green.

But a few days ago, while going through some auctions from last year, I came across part of Mendieta’s Siluetas series, which had been sold in September 2025. And those photographs stayed with me. They reminded me of what a remarkable artist she was, and, more importantly, of how much there is still to say about her work.

What makes Mendieta particularly interesting in this context is that she doesn't simply place a female body in nature, she allows the body and nature to become indistinguishable.

In her Siluetas, Mendieta used the outline of her own body as a starting point, tracing it into the landscape with mud, flowers, grass, stones, fire, water and other organic materials. Sometimes the body is there, sometimes only its imprint remains. The line between woman and landscape becomes very blurry.

And well, all those mythological figures we were talking about before, don’t seem so far away.

The dryad was not simply a woman who happened to live in a forest, she was the tree. The nymph was not merely a beautiful woman surrounded by water or flowers, she was an embodiment of the landscape itself. Mendieta seems to resurrect this logic, but with one big difference: she is not being transformed into nature by someone else’s imagination, she is doing the transformation herself.

Because historically, as we said before, the association between women and nature was not neutral at all. To call women natural was often to call them bodily, emotional and irrational. It placed women on the opposite side of the great Western divide between nature and culture. Nature was something to be controlled. Women, conveniently, needed to be controlled too.

Mendieta takes that hierarchy and turns it upside down.

There is no attempt in her work to conquer the landscape, instead, the body is returned to the earth. It becomes part of the landscape and eventually disappears into it.

Her Siluetas are temporary. The body leaves a trace and then is absorbed back into the environment. Her work refuses the idea that something has to be permanent in order to be significant. Like cycles themselves.

In a way, Mendieta takes precisely those qualities historically used to diminish women, and makes them the main point of her art.

So, very soon, I was labeled as the family’s, classroom’s, and group of friends’ artist.

If something had to be done regarding plastic arts around me, I was the person responsible for it. I would paint all my friends’ notebooks, probably ending my share of the Amazon rainforest through the amount of paper I used. If the school needed a poster, Maria was the designated person for the job.

I was very good, and I was also a people pleaser. So even if I had other things to do, or I did not particularly enjoy the prompt, I did it anyway.

It was around the age of 13 when I was publicly praised for something else.

Writing.

After reading a school book, our Spanish teacher (still, to this day, the best teacher I have ever encountered) gave us homework: write a different ending for that book.

Something you should know about me is that I am the textbook small-town girl who likes to read, create things, dreams of leaving the city she grew up in, and is absolutely terrible at sports.

By that age, my favorite book was Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, and Federico García Lorca was my best friend. I am not proud of it. I was unbearable.

But this background gave me an advantage over the rest of my classmates, so I came up with a dystopian ending, quite feminist for a 13-year-old in 2008.

My teacher, as a professional who actually cared about her students and loved what she did, decided to praise my writing in front of everyone.

And even if it happened almost 18 years ago, I still remember it like it was yesterday.

She was talking generally about the assignment when she looked at me and said to everyone:

“Maria Ruiz’s ending? That was genius.”

Then she proceeded to read it out loud.

I did not know what to do with myself.

All eyes were on me for five minutes, and I was your typical emo baby who avoided pictures and wanted to disappear whenever attention was placed on me.

She encouraged me to enter writing contests and even brought me to some.

But, of course, some classmates — who I now understand were just teenagers who probably did not receive enough attention at home — shamed me for it. So I parked that part of myself and went back to being the painter.

The spark was still there, though.

I kept writing and reading, just more privately.

At 18, I entered university to study Fine Arts. And reality slapped me in the face so hard that my head spun like a screw.

I was still very good at painting and drawing. But suddenly, there was this group of incredibly talented people who could translate whatever was in their minds into any medium without the medium itself being the limitation.

I was excellent at drawing, very good at painting, and mediocre at sculpture. I understood the basics, but my hands refused to work with clay and stone the way they worked with charcoal.

My entire identity as an artist and painter fell apart and crashed against the ground.

Who the fuck was I if I was not the gifted artist?

The ego death was real.

I wanted to quit. Completely. Cold turkey. Study English Philology, jump off a cliff, I don’t know. And it felt terrible because Fine Arts was the thing I had wanted to study and do since I was a small child. Everything I had done academically had driven me there.

I ignored I don’t know how many comments about how “Fine Arts is a dead end” or “That does not give you money” and went for it.

And at that moment, I just wanted to stab myself with one of my own brushes.

Frustration was not even enough to describe how I felt.

Also, the way the Fine Arts educational system is structured does not always help creativity. It often feels more like literal mass production: passing student after student through the same classes, the same still lifes, the same exercises.

Instead of helping students develop as artists, it often focuses on showing them techniques and expecting them to master them within two weeks.

When you finally understood oil painting, suddenly it was time for pastels. Then watercolors. Then the motherfucking encaustic painting, which I do not wish even upon my worst enemy because I set two canvases on fire before figuring it out.

Fine Arts is not for the weak. You develop real triceps after the second year of having sculpture as a subject. I never had a callus in my entire life until I had to sculpt stone for six months straight.

I entered an institution expecting it to validate my identity, but it forced me to dismantle it.

But when I was touching rock bottom, being humbled left and right, and hating every piece I was creating, even though my family kept all those “exercises” as if they were Picasso originals, something unexpected happened.

Art Theory showed up.

I did not know it yet, but I had just discovered the place where I belonged

And I loved that shit, from the first lesson, I was hooked.

Kant, Danto, Hume, Nietzsche, Gombrich, and the damned Giorgio Vasari became my favorite subjects to talk about.

I completely changed the narrative of who I was.

Not everything ends when you realize you are not the next Magritte. You can decide who is going to be the next Magritte, or explain why.

If you are good enough.

To be good at Art Theory, you need to be good at what was basically my favorite hobby: reading and writing.

And you need a personality trait for it. Being obsessive.

And, quoting Richard Papen from The Secret History:

“I am nothing if not obsessive.”

The same drive that, as a child, made me perfect the skill of drawing eyes. The same drive that made teenage me consume Wikipedia page after Wikipedia page about everything related to Dante. That obsessive need to know everything about a subject was what made me excellent at Art Theory.

After many years of being the shy girl, I became unapologetic and extremely opinionated.

Because painting allows you to hide behind your creations and let them speak for you. But to perform this new skill, you need to be loud and clear. You need to have a voice.

And, ironically, the quality of my art increased.

Far from being a very good copy of a sculpture or a painting, my work became more unique and personal. I created distance between myself and the classical themes, and I started doing what I actually wanted.

I created abstract paintings based on Kabuki Theater, where I painted my face as one of the traditional characters and stamped my image repeatedly onto wet linen.

I sewed photographs together with gold thread.

I reduced Slavoj Žižek’s entire body of work into a painted, half-blue, half-red paracetamol glued onto a piece of papier-mâché and left the rest open to interpretation.

For the first time in my life, since I was a child, I was being creative. Not just good at painting.

This is not a unique experience. If anything, it is a very universal realization.

When, inside a small circle, you are considered a gifted person, and then you are thrown into the world and discover there are thousands of people like you, all going through the same identity crisis.

That part escapes your control. What is up to you is how you redirect the narrative.

I realized that, for many reasons beyond simply discovering I was not the second coming of Da Vinci, making a living exclusively from painting was going to be extremely difficult.I had to accept that loving painting and building a sustainable life around art did not necessarily mean the same thing.

I was working as a Creative Director when I received my first opportunity to curate an exhibition.

They needed someone with my background, and I happened to be there. I had no idea what I was doing or how I had ended up in that room. I had about as much practical knowledge about the subject as I did about space engines.

Suddenly, I was faced with several portfolios, different exhibition layouts, and many people asking me questions about manifestos, wall texts, and the overall vision. It was overwhelming. And I was running on fumes and copious amounts of coffee.

But what helped me push through was realizing that my job was to gather all the loose ends, to connect the artists and their work with the central theme, and to help everyone understand why they were there.

Basically I was getting paid to do what I had been doing my entire life for free. Obsess about something, read and write about it until oblivion and bonus point because now people had to listen to me. The dream.

And now that, it’s my everyday cup of tea.

I still love to paint, and every once in a while, I create watercolor birthday cards for the people close to me. I paint in the books I read. But painting is no longer the only definition of who I am.

My art does not end with painting or drawing. My art is helping people discover, love, and understand art as much as I do.

Skagen is the northernmost town in Denmark, at the top of the Jutland peninsula, where the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea collide. At first sight, it’s a picturesque fishermen’s town. But nothing could be further from reality.

A couple of years ago, my boyfriend and I decided to go there for a few days during the Easter holidays. We both live together in Copenhagen. But he is Danish, so he knows the hidden gems of his motherland. He told me that he had gone there a few times during his childhood with his parents and brother. He is from southern Jutland, so it was a common holiday trip to do.

We rented a summerhouse there for a few days and drove around six hours from Copenhagen to Skagen with our dog.

I had heard about Skagen before through the artistic circles of Copenhagen. Most of the biggest Danish painters are from there or spent several periods of their lives there. And I learned why through first-hand experience as soon as we passed Frederikshavn, a city at the beginning of Skagen’s tiny peninsula. The landscape, the light, and even the air changed dramatically.

It was April, so the sun was setting quite early, and by the time we reached our summerhouse in Hulsig (a summerhouse settlement a few minutes away from Skagen), we checked the house and went for a stroll around.

The summerhouse was a few minutes’ walk from the beach. But Skagen’s beaches are not the kind of beaches we all normally know.

I am Spanish, so my idea of a beach is still a long stretch of flat sand and then the sea. That’s not Skagen at all.

We walked through sand and tall yellow grass-covered hills, and then, bam, the sea.

It was the first (of many times during those days) that my chest became too small for how big my heart felt. The landscape was so gorgeous, so wild and barely touched by humans, that I could barely breathe for a few seconds.

The sun was setting and it was slightly cloudy, so the sky looked like a painting itself. All the hues of purple you could imagine, followed by the deepest blue you could imagine if you looked back.

Due to its geographic situation, the way the light interacts with the landscape is nothing short of movie-like. The yellow grass, the cream-colored sand, and the way the light filtered through all the pines scattered through the terrain were some of the most beautiful things I have ever witnessed.

I could just stop and look around every few steps because I could not believe my eyes.

The next day we visited Denmark’s only desert.

Yes, Denmark has a desert.

Called Råbjerg Mile, it is the largest migrating dune in Denmark. Kilometers and kilometers of never-ending, soft white sand that got everywhere. And once you are on top of the dune, you can see both coasts of Skagen.

That is another moment of pure wonder.

When I had to go down the dune, it wasn’t as wonderful because I’m a clumsy city person, and that sand is so thin and soft that sometimes I was knee-deep in it. But it was worth every time I had to ask my boyfriend for help and a leaning arm.

At that point of the trip, less than twenty-four hours in, as a Fine Arts graduate who loves painting, I understood all those Danish artists who migrated there and never looked back.

Even if the landscape, wild and unruly, was beautiful by itself, the light was the main character there.

That is impossible to recreate.

Every hour of the day you have a different landscape, simply because of the way the light interacts with it. It’s overwhelming.

The next day, we visited the town itself.

The night before, as the art curator I am, I studied the museum’s website front to back, researched the artists and paintings on display, and basically got ready to guide my software developer boyfriend, who does not necessarily like art, but who would go through it and listen to my rants (which are way longer in person than here) just to make me happy.

And, like everything else connected to this place, the museum left me speechless in the best possible way.

It’s not big, or famous, but it’s perfect.

If the Danish word hygge was a place, it would be Skagen’s Art Museum.

Blue-painted walls, tastefully covered in paintings from top to bottom.

Skagens Museum is best known for the Skagen Painters (Skagensmalerne), a group of Scandinavian artists who worked in the fishing town of Skagen in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The museum holds an extraordinary collection of their works.

The collection focuses on coastal landscapes, fishermen and everyday life, portraits, social gatherings, interior scenes, and naturalist and impressionist influences.

Imagine not being an impressionist having that light working full-time for you.

Among the museum's most important painters is Peder Severin (P.S.) Krøyer, who became famous for his bright beach scenes and beautiful depictions of sunlight and community life. His paintings, such as Summer Evening on Skagen's Southern Beach, capture the peaceful atmosphere and extraordinary light I was talking about.

Another central artist is Anna Ancher, the only member of the group born in Skagen. She is known for her remarkable use of color and light in paintings of everyday domestic life. Her works often portray women, family members, and quiet interiors, showing both warmth and realism.

I knew very little about Danish naturalists before this trip, to be honest. But Anna Ancher was one of those discoveries that stays with you and comes back every once in a while.

I know she is not considered an Impressionist as such. But her way of observing and portraying how light behaves in interiors should have its own name and movement.

Her paintings were not as detail-oriented as P.S. Krøyer’s, but, under my humble opinion, they captured the way light makes everything almost magical in that place.

Maybe it was because she grew up under that changing light since she was born and understood it as a second nature. Or maybe it was simply her sensitivity as an artist. But her works aligned more with what I was seeing those days than any other painter displayed.

Michael Ancher, Anna’s husband, focused mainly on the lives of Skagen’s fishermen. His powerful paintings celebrate their courage, hard work, and close relationship with the sea. His realistic style and strong compositions made him one of Denmark’s most respected painters.

This particular Michael Ancher painting, The Drowned Fisherman, was especially touching for me because it portrays the tragedy of life at sea with dignity and compassion.

Used to Baroque and dramatic depictions of death and loss from Mediterranean artistic movements, seeing death portrayed through realistic details and a quiet atmosphere was a completely different experience.

It showed not only the loss of a fisherman but also the pain felt by the entire community. I stopped in my tracks for a while and somehow felt like I was peeking through a keyhole I shouldn’t have been looking through.

That raw realism, that more demure grief of Scandinavian cultures, felt too real.

The museum also displays works by Laurits Tuxen, known for his impressive portraits and large historical paintings, and Viggo Johansen, who painted intimate family scenes and landscapes with great sensitivity. Together with other artists such as Holger Drachmann and Christian Krohg, they complete the story of this unique artistic community.

The museum is worth every cent it cost. Even if it is small, it took me hours to go through it because every room had at least five paintings that swallowed me for a while.

Coming back from the town, inside the car, looking at the now dark blue sky through the window, is when I completely lost it.

A bright yellow full moon was peeking between the dunes at the side of the road, reflecting on the water and the tips of the yellow grass. It was peaceful, yet the most dramatically stunning landscape I have ever seen in my entire life.

Somehow that landscape made me cry inside the car while radio commercials were blasting offers from Harald Nyborg, to the point that my poor boyfriend had to ask me if I was okay.

I could only nod and try to laugh it off because I was having a straight-up Stendhal syndrome moment, and I did not know how to manage it.

I come from a gorgeous city. I am used to beautiful architecture, intricate buildings, and Arabic palaces. I live in Copenhagen and work in the art field. I am used to looking at aesthetically pleasing things the entire day.

But a night landscape unraveled me completely.

The following days were more of the same: stunning landscape after stunning landscape.

When you thought that Grenen, the tip of Skagen’s peninsula, where both seas collide and you can clearly see different colors on the water because of their different densities, was the most breathtaking thing you could see, then you would pass by a white church sinking into the sand.

And everything looked so still, quiet, and frozen in time, yet constantly moving because of how untouched it was.

I have no idea how many pictures I took or how many times I had to hold back tears. But that had never happened to me before.

The day we had to leave, I was a mess.

Grieving a place I had only been in for five days.

I always thought I wanted to be a big city girl. That’s why I moved to Copenhagen, got a job in the center, and chased that image of success that Sex and the City did so much damage creating in our generation’s minds.

But after that trip, Carrie went out the window.

I just wanted to move there and be part of that quiet, peaceful place.

I still do.

To the point that now, when moving outside Copenhagen is becoming a more discussed subject, one of the places in my mind is Skagen.

It’s been a minute since my last post.

A lot has happened in the meantime. Mostly because my boyfriend and I found out that we are expecting a baby girl by December.

A few small complications have me currently spending more time in bed than I would normally like, which, between crochet projects and starting the search for everything (necessary and completely unnecessary) that a baby apparently needs in Denmark, has given me plenty of time to stare at the ceiling and let my mind wander.

And then I remembered something.

When I was a small kid, there was a fever for drop-shaped coral earrings in my neighborhood. As I have mentioned many times before, I am from the Albaicín, and growing up in the Albaicín means growing up between different cultures and communities that have been sharing the same streets for centuries.

The Roma community has always been one of the most visible parts of that history. And one of the things I always noticed were the earrings women wore.

Big, dramatic, drop-shaped coral earrings, sometimes engraved with Arabic doors or Christ’s face, usually combined with gold details and ribbons, so large that, as a child, I was convinced they were going to tear their ears. Somehow, they never did.

I have always been conflicted about whether I liked them or not. They felt excessive. But at the same time, they were gorgeous. They were a craftsmanship masterpiece.

There was something incredibly confident about them. They moved when the person moved. They felt so heavy and important.

Years later, when I started seeing coral appearing in the paintings I was studying, I realized that my childhood reaction was probably not that different from the reaction people have had to coral throughout history. Coral has always demanded attention.

The funny thing about coral is that it has always been difficult to define. It looks like a plant, but it is an animal. It grows in the sea, but resembles something from the land. It is alive, but when removed from the water it becomes something hard enough to carve and preserve. Now, as an adult with enough biology knowledge of biology I know what it is, but as a kid? I had no idea of what I was looking at, and that made them even more interesting.

Imagine encountering coral thousands of years ago. You find a red branch at the bottom of the sea. Then you take it out and feels like stone.But it was alive, somehow. Witchcraft, heaven-sent, God knows. It had no explanation for many years, so, as the rest of the things without an explanation, a myth was created around it.

According to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, coral was created after Perseus killed Medusa. When he placed her severed head near the shore, her blood touched the plants around it, transforming them into coral.

Giorgio Vasari, painted “Perseo and Andromeda” in 1571. There, at the bottom of the main scene, Medusa’s head lays on the shore, and from her neck, blood spills to the water, transforming itself into coral.

It is one of those stories that sounds completely absurd until you remember that the object itself is absurd.

Someone’s blood becoming stone is honestly not the strangest explanation. It’s like the hydrophobic sand we play with as kids (if that makes sense).

What is interesting is that the myth captured something that would remain attached to coral for centuries: transformation.

That idea followed coral into the Roman world and beyond. It was worn as an amulet, especially by children, because people believed it could protect against illness and the evil eye.

And that is something we often forget when looking at historical objects. We tend to place them in museums and separate them from everyday life. But many objects that appear in paintings were once deeply connected to people’s fears, beliefs, and hopes.

Coral was something you wore because the world was dangerous.

And then it entered Renaissance painting.

There are many examples of paintings, portraying a Madonna holding a baby Jesus, and he is wearing a coral necklace.

To a modern viewer, it might look like a charming detail. Something a wealthy Renaissance child might wear. But for the original audience, the meaning was much stronger, the coral was a protective charm.

The infant Christ was wearing something believed to defend children from harm.

But when you think the symbolism ends there, renaissance painters tells you to sit down and listen.

The colour of coral immediately recalls blood. Right?

The necklace protecting the child is also a reminder of the sacrifice waiting for him.

The Renaissance loved this kind of visual contradiction. They could place an innocent object into a painting and allow it to carry a much heavier meaning.

This is one of the reasons Renaissance symbolism fascinates me. Nothing is simply decorative.

The earrings I saw in the Albaicín were not a random fashion choice that appeared out of nowhere. They belonged to a much older Mediterranean relationship with coral as something valuable, protective, and full of symbolism.

By the modern period, coral began to change meaning again.

Artists became less interested in its protective qualities and more interested in its physical appearance. The branching forms, the intense red colour, the strange relationship between organic life and sculpture made coral fascinating as an artistic material.

Contemporary artists have returned to coral especially because of its environmental meaning.

A material that once represented protection is now connected with what needs protection. The symbol has shifted because our relationship with nature has changed. Now we know what it is, not a heavenly creation, but an alive being that needs protection because we are destroying our waters and corals with them.

But perhaps that is exactly why coral has survived for so long in art. It has never had one fixed meaning.

The Greeks saw Medusa’s blood. Ancient Mediterranean cultures saw protection. Renaissance painters saw sacrifice. Contemporary artists see fragility.

The funny thing is that coral itself did not change. The Mediterranean fisherman who collected it, the Renaissance painter who placed it around Christ’s neck, and the woman in the Albaicín wearing those earrings were all looking at the same strange red material.

What changes is us. The information we have about it, the fears we project onto it.

And maybe that is why I still think about those earrings from my childhood. Back then, I only saw something excessive. Something so heavy that, in my mind, it was only a matter of time before someone’s ears gave up.

I had no idea I was looking at something that carried Medusa’s blood, centuries of protection rituals, Renaissance theology, Mediterranean trade, and generations of human fascination.

I just thought they were a lot, and very beautiful at the same time. And honestly, maybe that was enough.

After all, coral has spent thousands of years making people wonder what exactly they were looking at. I was just another person trying to figure it out.

And now, while waiting for my daughter to arrive, I find myself thinking about coral again.

So yes, I think I’ll probably get her a coral necklace.

Just in case.

First I’d like to thank those 1.200 individuals who willingly decided to subscribe to my Substack. I really did not think that my content would be interesting for so many people and I feel extremely flattered.

As long as I am alive, something will be written about Federico García Lorca.

The same way that Leonard Cohen said that Lorca taught him how to write, Lorca taught me how to see.

I cannot recall when I discovered Lorca, because he has been a heavy influence in my life for as long as I have memories. I don’t remember a time in my life where I did not know who Lorca was.

When I was a kid, I lived Lorca through kid-friendly adaptations of his plays, visiting his former house “La Huerta de San Vicente”, or simply listening to music adaptations of his poems. Lorca and I share a hometown, Granada. So, next to the Alhambra, he is probably the other big calling card of the city. He was everywhere.

When I was around 11 or 12, roaming around the bookshelves in my house, I found a book that got my attention. It was “Romancero Gitano y Poemas del Cante Jondo” by Federico García Lorca. It was a 1972 edition from Austral that was basically crumbling apart. But I took it, and after skipping a very boring prologue, I devoured that book within hours. Yeah, it was a poetry book, not too long, but I swallowed every poem like it was ambrosia.

Suddenly Lorca went from a poet to THE POET.

It was a specific poem that did it for me. “Romance Sonámbulo” is a dreamlike, tragic poem that blends love, smuggling, and death. Because Federico García Lorca uses surreal and symbolic language, the plot is not told directly, but it follows a clear, heartbreaking narrative arc.

A dying gypsy smuggler runs away from the police to reunite with his lover. He arrives at her house only to find her father consumed by grief. Looking up, they discover the heartbroken girl has drowned herself in the cistern.

The plot is terribly sad, but the way he describes it is so beautiful that it hurts.

That’s the thing with Lorca: he makes death feel and look beautiful. Grief is the price to pay after experiencing it.

The poem has three key stanzas that make it so alluring to read.

First, a hypnotic refrain, sung by hundreds of Spanish singers throughout the years:

“Verde que te quiero verde.
Verde viento. Verdes ramas.
El barco sobre la mar
y el caballo en la montaña.”

Translation:
“Green, how I want you green.
Green wind. Green branches.
The ship upon the sea
and the horse upon the mountain.”

Second, the Smuggler’s request, where he expresses the regret he feels, and how much he would change to bring the woman back to life:

“Compadre, quiero cambiar
mi caballo por su casa,
mi montura por su espejo,
mi cuchillo por su manta.”

Translation:
“Friend, I want to trade
my horse for your house,
my saddle for your mirror,
my knife for your blanket.”

And lastly, the tragic, yet beautiful vision of the dead woman:

“Sobre el rostro del aljibe,
se mecía la gitana.
Verde carne, pelo verde,
con ojos de fría plata.”

Translation:
“Upon the face of the cistern,
the gypsy girl was swaying.
Green flesh, green hair,
with eyes of cold silver.”

While green stands for balance, nature, spring, and rebirth across virtually all cultures, for Lorca it means something completely different, something dark and deep. Green means death and decay, forbidden passion, frustration, or sterility. That is what he does: he takes something that is absolute and turns it around, making his poems borderline surreal, like a fever dream written in prose.

And this is what trapped me and never let me go.

Lorca’s world is not bright, not full of happiness and rainbows, but full of a dark, raw, magical reality that, somehow, I am familiar with.

His poetry achieved a rare feat: bridging the gap between elite avant-garde art and popular folklore.

Lorca took traditional Spanish folk structures and injected them with cutting-edge Surrealism and Symbolism. He used centuries-old rhythms that common people could instantly memorize, but filled them with highly sophisticated, dreamlike images that have fascinated readers from his first published poems to this day.

Rather than relying on clichéd literary tropes, Lorca invented a highly personalized vocabulary of symbols that remains consistent across all his works. Readers can dissect his poetry like a puzzle because objects always carry heavy, haunting double meanings.

Lorca paints with words, and he has a very specific style.

And that’s the part of Lorca that interests me most today: the image-maker.

While many writers leave behind stories, characters, and lessons, Lorca leaves scenes. I would even dare to say that he was as good as Tolkien when it comes to describing a situation and making you feel like you are there witnessing it. Two very different methods, same result. I felt like I was there when Éowyn dropped the iconic line “I am no man” and killed the Witch-king of Angmar in The Lord of the Rings. And I felt the anguish of Bernarda’s daughters when she locked them and herself into an eight-year mourning period imposed after her husband’s death in La Casa de Bernarda Alba.

This is also why Lorca’s influence doesn’t stop at literature. His work is deeply visual. The same symbolic vocabulary that structures his poetry functions like a visual grammar.

It is no surprise that Lorca became a major reference point for the plastic arts, especially painting, illustration, stage design, and contemporary visual storytelling.

You can see this clearly in how closely his imagery aligns with the language of 20th-century visual art movements. Surrealism, in particular, feels almost like a parallel translation of Lorca’s world rather than an unrelated aesthetic development. The same obsession with symbolic objects, emotional landscapes, and irrational juxtapositions that defines painters like Dalí or Magritte finds a literary counterpart in Lorca’s poems. It is not that Lorca “influenced” Surrealism in a direct, linear way, but that he was part of the same cultural current where reality stopped being stable and started becoming symbolic again.

Imagine living between two World Wars, and in Lorca’s case, being queer in a deeply traditional Spain, and living between the horrors of the First World War and the Spanish Civil War—Surrealism is, funnily enough, the most logical outlet.

In painting specifically, Lorca’s presence is often indirect but unmistakable. Spanish artists of the modern and postwar periods repeatedly returned to his imagery: fragmented bodies, dark rural landscapes, haunting female figures, and that constant oscillation between beauty and violence. Even when Lorca is not explicitly referenced, his symbolic system is often still there, absorbed into the visual language of Iberian modern art.

Salvador Dalí’s creative relationship with Lorca defined the 1920s surrealist landscape. Lorca’s poetry heavily influenced Dalí, inspiring him to use symbolic motifs of desire, irrationality, and death. The poet also frequently appeared directly as a subject or motif in Dalí’s works during their most intense years of friendship.

“Honey Is Sweeter Than Blood” (La miel es más dulce que la sangre) (1927): This is one of Dalí’s earliest major Surrealist works. Scholars widely interpret the rotting animals, severed limbs, and haunting figures as reflections of his complex psychological and erotic relationship with Lorca. Because yes, Lorca and Dalí were more than friends and art buddies.

“Apparition of Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach” (1938): Following Lorca’s tragic execution in 1936, Dalí was profoundly haunted. Lorca’s influence shifted from direct collaboration to a transfigured presence; scholars suggest the desolate, dreamlike beachscapes and shifting, overlapping figures in Dalí’s later 1930s works are deeply tied to the poet’s lingering memory.

But this does not end with Dalí. Even today, mainstream major artists like Rosalía draw heavily from the artistic and cultural legacy of Lorca. Lorca’s writings—particularly his exploration of Andalusian and Romani folklore, his poetic treatment of tragic love, and his concept of duende (a visceral, emotional intensity in art)—are foundational reference points in modern flamenco and heavily influence Rosalía’s work.

And many before her, but I already talked about it a few rants ago.

On Lorca, Enrique Morente and Leonard Cohen

Yeah, even Leonard Cohen would die (again) for Lorca; he literally named his own daughter Lorca. And I completely understand.

Imagine being so iconic and so good at what you do that, decades after your passing—and with not that much work published—you remain so extremely relevant to this day.

Glad I grabbed that book from the shelf and not the next one that was about massages and pressure points.

Otherwise maybe now I’d be a physical therapist and not a shy painter who rathers to write about art in all its shapes. And who wants that.

Not fake internet obsessive. Not “I saw a cute skirt and now I’m obsessed.” I mean something else entirely, genuinely obsessive. The object of the obsession eating me alive obsessive.

If something catches my attention, I need to know everything about it immediately. Every article, every book, every comment thread written by a divorced man at 2am in 2009. I research like I’m preparing for trial.

That’s why I’m good at my job. That’s why I am a walking archive of useless and terrifyingly specific information.

And one of those things is eyes.

I might forget your name five seconds after you tell me. But I will remember your eyes for the rest of my life.

I am not just an expert on the biological behavior of eyes but also their meaning, the shapes and colours and what do they mean according to the most obscure mythologies.

From photoreceptors transforming the light into electrical signals to the Japanese legend of the sanpaku eyes.

Eyes are the windows to the soul, even fingerprints can be repeated in some cases, but not eyes, each eye, each iris pattern is perfectly unique.

Probably the first pair of eyes that took my whole attention and were the kick-start of this life-long obsession were my father’s eyes. From a distance they always looked dark brown and warm, but one day, I don’t know how young I was but very small, I remember the sun hitting them in a way that suddenly made them as green as a forest. They were framed by his tan skin and black thick eyebrows, and they simple popped like gemstones.

That moment altered me permanently.

Because once you realize people contain hidden colors, hidden selves, hidden weather systems that only appear under certain light conditions, you start searching for revelation everywhere.

And that is what I have been doing ever since.

Looking at eyes waiting for the world to split open again.

When I had the opportunity in university, while studyin Fine Arts. I dedicated an entire semester worth of credits to them. Did a huge research-photography project through subjects, dedicated exclusively to them. And called it “Indra”.

Why Indra?

Indra is famously known as the "thousand-eyed" god (Sahasraksha) in Hindu mythology, symbolizing his role as king of the Devas, a vigilant ruler, and an embodiment of omniscience and divine insight. While primary a god of rain, thunder, and war, his thousand eyes represent his omnipresent gaze over the universe.

Also at that time, I just watched the movie “I, origins” that fueled my eye obsession like petrol to a fire.

I walked around during months asking people to take a pictures of their eyes. People I knew and people I saw on the street and had no idea who they were. They just had amazing eyes. Worth having an awkward moment.

I ended up with around one thousand different pair of eyes on my camera. High definition pictures of eyes of all kinds. And I can tell you, each one of them were a masterpiece.

But eyes had been haunting us since the beginning of the times, way before painting skills developed as much, we saw and understood eyes as something out worldly, a piece of God in each one of us.

Eyes universally symbolize divine watchfulness, protection, omniscience, and spiritual insight. Often deemed the "window to the soul", they represent a bridge between mortal and divine realms, acting as protective amulets against evil, or manifestations of all-seeing gods.

Another manifestation of eyes that is forever present in my life is The Hamsa or The Hand of Fatima.

The hamsa is typically used as a symbol of divine protection and protection against the evil eye. The evil eye is a superstitious belief that a malevolent glare from someone (usually someone envious of the target) can cause bad luck or misfortune.

The hamsa is depicted with an eye in its palm to serve as a powerful, vigilant, and active shield against the "Evil Eye". This watchful eye is designed to gaze back at negative energy, warding off misfortune, jealousy, and bad luck while attracting blessings.

I never considered myself a superstitious person, perhaps because my entire family is superstitious to a comic level. Really, like dropping salt on the table and run to the closest balcony to throw a glass of water out of it to avoid back luck. Or my mother religiously tying red ribbons around my left wrist since I have memories because it will protect me from bad intentions and energies. But now, surrounded by the pragmatic realistic reality of Denmark and its Danes, I do realize that I am indeed quite superstitious.

Even if I am an academic. I do believe in the power of the evil eye, and how people, without directly intending to do wrong to you but carrying the wrong kind of energy can throw you into a bad situation.

As I said in the beginning I do really look at people’s eyes. Shamelessly. But I just don’t look at the colour or shape, but I try to look at what is behind them. And believe me, most of the time you can really see people’s intention in their gaze. Even though their demeanor is nice and welcoming, eyes never lie.

When I was eighteen and I was old enough to not to give that many explanations I got a Hamsa tattooed on my forearm. Big and visible, with a huge eye on its palm. The reason? If the red ribbon fell, I still would have a second line of defense together with the silver Higa Fist I would always have hanging from my neck.

In Latin and Mediterranean cultures (especially in Spain, Portugal, and Italy), the higa is traditionally worn as a jewelry charm to ward off the "evil eye".

All of this because I am perhaps a bit superstitious. I can read people’s eyes like an open book. And sometimes I don’t like the plot.

Writing this I realized that, I ended up working exclusively with my eyes. With my two functional, biological, no figurative pineal gland third eye, but those two very advanced light receptors I have on my face.

I am a seer, an observer. I look at things, paintings, sculptures, artifacts, tapestries. I read books, articles, situations and I write about it.

My entire life has been organized around acts of seeing.

And maybe that is why I return, always, to eyes. They’re my biggest obsession and the most useful tools for how I navigate the world.

I used to hate pink with a passion, like I was being paid for it. I don’t know if it was because I was a girl desperate to be different, or because I was very aware, very early on, of what it meant. I did not want to be perceived as “too feminine”, weak, or empty-headed.

Now that my frontal lobe has fully developed—and I’ve had time to think for myself—I see how ridiculous that was. A colour does not define an entire category of people. That idea was constructed, repeated, and sold back to us until it stuck. So now I try to approach pink the same way I approach any other colour: with curiosity, and a bit of respect.

And honestly, I owe it an apology.

Because pink has history. And a cool one.

Pink rarely appears in nature, which may explain why the color only entered the English language as a noun at the end of the 17th century.

That does not means that it wasn’t used in art, au contraire.
It was used since ancient times.

Early humans would use red ochres mixed with white minerals to reach this colour.

Ancient Egyptian artists mixed red and white to create pink for detailed tomb paintings and murals. By the New Kingdom, it was part of a sophisticated palette used to communicate stories of gods and the afterlife.

The color was first formally recognized as a concept in Homer’s Odyssey (c. 800 BCE) with the famous description of the “rosy-fingered dawn” (rhododaktylos Eos).

The Latin word roseus was used to describe shades of pink and rose. Pink appeared in luxury villa decorations and frescoes, most notably in depictions of Venus, the goddess of love and beauty.

Pink was deeply associated with Venus. Roses—and by extension their pink and red hues—were her primary symbol, appearing in myths like the one where white roses were stained by the blood of her lover, Adonis.

During the Renaissance, pink emerged as a significant color in art, used primarily to depict flesh tones, divinity, and tender emotions. Artists like Cennino Cennini described creating it by mixing red earth (sinopia) with white lime, often for delicate undertones. It was frequently used in religious paintings for the Christ child’s garments and symbolized spiritual love, rather than the feminine connotations of later centuries.

But no one used pink like Sandro Botticelli.

Sandro Botticelli used pink not just as a pigment for skin, but as a central symbolic element to represent divine love, fertility, and the transition of seasons. His "Botticellian pink" is often characterized by a luminous, raw rose quality that gives his figures an otherworldly glow.

We can divide his work and collaboration with pink in three different branches.

In one side, we have what I’d call “Pink Roses and the Goddess of Love”.

In his most famous mythological works, pink roses are the primary attribute of Venus, symbolizing the birth of beauty and love.

The Birth of Venus: As Venus drifts to shore on a scallop shell, the wind gods Zephyr and Chloris scatter delicate pink roses into the air. These flowers represent femininity, gratitude, and the "birth" of unconditional love.

Primavera (Spring): Pink roses appear at the feet of Venus, representing her purity and divine nature. Pink hyacinths also appear at the feet of Flora and the Three Graces, further connecting the color to marriage and romance.

On the second place we have the religious and human symbolism. In Botticelli's religious works, pink bridges the gap between human affection and divine status.

Madonna della Loggia: In this early work, the Virgin Mary wears a dark blue cloak over a bright red dress, but the Baby Jesus is painted in a light pink robe. This choice emphasizes his humanity and innocence. Pink was a traditional symbol for the bond between mothers and children in the Renaissance, often appearing in depictions of the Madonna and Child to represent spiritual nourishment and healing.

And lastly, on a more superficial note. Fashion and status in narrative scenes.

Botticelli also used pink to denote status or specific character traits in his secular or narrative series.

The Story of Nastagio degli Onesti: In this violent narrative series, a knight is depicted wearing a pink cape, which in this context signals his high social standing and vitality—a reflection of pink being a "diluted" form of the powerful red worn by the ruling class.

Rococo enters and it comes flooded with this colour.

In the Rococo era, pink was more than just a color; it was a powerful symbol of luxury, high status, and aristocratic leisure. Unlike today, it was not a "gendered" color and was worn with equal enthusiasm by both men and women to signal their refined taste and wealth.

The color’s dominance was largely driven by Madame de Pompadour, the official mistress of Louis XV and a major trendsetter of the Enlightenment. She loved the color so much that the Sèvres porcelain factory created a unique, vibrant shade of pink just for her in 1757, known as "Rose Pompadour".

This pink appeared everywhere—on silk gowns, embroidered men's waistcoats, furniture upholstery, and delicate tea sets, cementing it as the definitive shade of the French court.

Artists used pink to create the soft, ethereal atmosphere the period is known for.

In Fragonard’s masterpiece “The Swing” , the central figure’s frothy pink dress acts as a spotlight, symbolizing flirtation, youthful playfulness, and hidden desires.

During the 19th century, painters like Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, and Mary Cassatt used pink to capture the delicate effects of light and shadow, particularly in depictions of dancers and nature. For these artists, pink wasn't just a "pretty" color; it was a reflection of specific atmospheric conditions.

For example, Mary Cassatt, often used soft pinks in her domestic scenes to create a sense of warmth and intimacy, particularly in the skin tones of the mothers and children she painted.

Seriously, check this woman if you don’t know her. In a nutshell, Mary Cassatt (1844–1926) was a trailblazing American painter and printmaker who became a core member of the French Impressionist circle. She is best known for her "revolutionary" focus on the private lives of women, particularly the intimate, unromanticized bond between mothers and children.

In the hands of Pop artists, pink shifted from the "natural" light of Impressionism to something intentionally artificial and synthetic. It became the color of mass production, neon lights, and the "American Dream."

And who was the OG of mass production? Warhol.

For Warhol, fuchsia and "shocking pink" were about dehumanization. By layering loud, unnatural pinks over Marilyn Monroe’s face, he turned a real person into a flat, consumer product—much like a soup can. It represented the "glaze" of celebrity.

The 20th century saw the most radical shifts in the meaning of pink, transforming it from a masculine powerhouse into a symbol of hyper-femininity, before contemporary movements began reclaiming it as a tool for political and gender-neutral expression.

So, this is fun.

In the early 20th century, pink was often considered a strong, decided color more suitable for boys, while blue was seen as delicate and dainty for girls.

The shift to "pink for girls" was largely a product of post-WWII consumerism and targeted marketing.

Post-war efforts aimed to return women to domestic roles. Advertisers branded pink as the color of the "ideal housewife," seen in everything from Mamie Eisenhower's "First Lady Pink" inaugural gown to pink-tinted kitchen appliances.

Clothing manufacturers realized they could double profits if parents felt they couldn't reuse blue "boy" clothes for a girl sibling. By 1959, the launch of Barbie cemented pink as the definitive feminine signifier.

As much as the movie tried to depict the opposite, Barbie embodies what’s wrong with being a woman in a men’s world. What you have to be or do to fit in, in the tiny space they left for you.

Probably that’s why I hated pink so much as a kid.

I didn’t fit the mold, black-haired, opinionated, far from Barbie-shaped—and there was no version of that bright pink world that had space for me.

And now we’ve got this whole “I’m just a girl” thing.

And I don’t know… it makes my eye twitch a little.

I get that it started as a joke. I get the irony. I get the whole reclaiming-the-narrative angle. But the internet has this incredible talent for taking something ironic and running it straight into the ground until it forgets it was ever a joke in the first place.

I’m just a girl—I can’t do this, I don’t understand that. Haven’t we been here before?

It feels suspiciously close to the same old script, just rebranded. Same idea, better lighting. Now it’s self-aware, so it’s fine. Except… is it?

There’s something about it that feels like preemptively shrinking yourself. Like getting the joke in first before anyone else can make it. Which, sure, is a defense mechanism. A good one, even. But it’s still a defense.

And I think that’s why it bothers me. Because it flirts a little too hard with playing dumb. And we already know where that road goes. We’ve done that arc before. It took years to shake off.

It’s the same discomfort I had with pink, just wearing a different outfit.

Not the thing itself—but what starts to stick to it if you’re not paying attention.

I wanted to end on something I keep circling back to. Purple.

After my childhood infatuation with green came the purple period. Less obsessive maybe, but it never really left. It stretched itself across the years instead of burning out. I mostly wear black, but if there’s a choice to be made, it’s always purple.

Purple has always been a difficult colour. And I love it for it.

For most of human history, it wasn’t just rare, it was borderline impossible. Around 1600 BCE, the Phoenicians in Tyre figured out how to extract dye from Murex sea snails. Thousands of snails crushed for a trace of colour. Roughly 10,000 for a single gram.

So purple didn’t become symbolic by accident. It was forced into meaning by scarcity. Only emperors could afford it. Only systems of power could sustain it.

Rome legislated it. The Byzantine court ritualized it. You weren’t just born—you were porphyrogenitos.

Literally.

The "purple birth room" (Porphyra) was a specialized chamber in the Byzantine Great Palace of Constantinople, entirely lined with rare purple porphyry stone. Used by empresses for childbirth, it ensured the child was literally "born in the purple".

And yet, for all its weight, painters mostly faked it.

True Tyrian purple had no real place on a palette. It was too expensive, too unstable, too impractical. So artists cheated—layering translucent reds over blues, building depth through patience and illusion. Purple, in painting, was already a constructed thing.

You can see it in The Dream of a Knight, where Raphael gives “Pleasure” a robe that used to be purple. Time peeled it apart. The red faded. What’s left is a ghost—blue and pink where something richer once held together.

Violet and purple retained their status as the colour of emperors and princes of the church throughout the long rule of the Byzantine Empire. Worn less frequently by Medieval and Renaissance kings and princes, it was worn by the professors of many of Europe’s new universities. Their robes were modelled after those of the clergy, and they often wore square violet caps and violet robes, or black robes with violet trim.

During the Renaissance Violet featured throughout many religious paintings. Angels and the Virgin Mary were often portrayed wearing violet robes.

It was a carefully calculated theological symbol. Violet is a physical blend of red (symbolizing humanity, blood, and earth) and blue (symbolizing divinity, the sky, and heaven). By dressing the Virgin Mary or Christ in violet, artists visually represented the Incarnation—the moment or state where the divine and the human became one.

Even in religion, purple carried tension. It shows up on the Virgin Mary, on angels, in moments of grief and transformation. A colour built from opposites: red (blood, earth, body) and blue (sky, distance, divinity). Not a compromise—a collision.

And for centuries, that’s where it stayed. Slightly out of reach.

In 1856, William Henry Perkin tries to synthesize quinine and accidentally creates mauveine instead—the first synthetic purple dye.

It’s almost insulting how quickly things collapse after that.

A colour that took thousands of lives (snails, but still) to produce suddenly spills into fabric, fashion, paint. Cheap. Stable. Everywhere. “Mauve mania” hits Europe. Purple goes from imperial to industrial in less than a generation.

Consequently, purple went from being present in less than 4% of paintings before the mid-19th century to suddenly rising to 37% by the late 19th century, frequently used by Impressionist painters like Claude Monet, Paul Signac, and Vincent van Gogh.

But was Claude Monet the one who led the way regarding using synthetic purple pigments on his paintings.

Claude Monet famously declared violet (purple) as the true color of the atmosphere, transforming Impressionism by replacing black with purple, lavender, and violet in shadows and twilight scenes. He believed it captured the ephemeral, changing light, heavily using it in later works.

Then Gustav Klimt takes it somewhere else entirely.

With Klimt, purple folds inward. It stops describing the world and starts describing the mind. In The Virgin (1913), it wraps around the figure in spirals that feel less like fabric and more like thought—dense, soft, slightly suffocating. A “wave” that isn’t water, but something psychological. Desire, maybe. Or just the strange logic of dreams.

It’s intimate. Almost too intimate.

And then, almost immediately after, it leaves the body.

The Suffragettes take it into the street. Onto banners, into sashes, across bodies again—but it doesn’t sit the same way anymore. It’s not inward, not reflective. It’s pointed.

They didn’t pick purple by accident. It was central—paired with white and green—but it carried the most weight. Dignity, yes, but also something firmer. Something that doesn’t ask to be recognized. It just is.

Under people like Emmeline Pankhurst, there’s a clear awareness that you don’t win this kind of fight on arguments alone. You need something visible. Something that sticks. Colour does that better than language ever could.

So they take this colour that had been locked up for centuries—kept for emperors, filtered through religion, protected by law—and just… wear it. No permission.

And it’s kind of funny, if you think about it.

A colour that was basically designed to separate people—to say this person matters more—ends up being used by people who were explicitly told they didn’t matter at all.

It flips.

Purple used to mean you were born into power. Now it means you’re claiming it.
It used to belong to bloodlines. Now it belongs to anyone willing to stand behind it.

And maybe that’s exactly why it works.

Because all that old meaning is still there. You don’t have to build it from scratch. It already carries authority, history, a kind of weight you can feel without naming. They didn’t erase that—they just pointed it somewhere else.

The same colour that once said you are above others
now insists we’re not below you.

While writing about pigments, I noticed something that’s hard to ignore once you see it: the more beautiful the colour, the more dangerous it tended to be.

And people still chose it. Consistently.

This isn’t really about paint. It’s about the strange weight beauty carries in human life. We treat it as optional—something secondary—but our behaviour suggests otherwise. We pursue it with intensity, discipline, and at times, complete disregard for our own safety.

So either humans are irrational…
or beauty is doing something much deeper than we like to admit.

Philosophy has long hinted at the latter. From Plato onward, beauty has been linked to truth, to meaning—something beyond utility. Something that justifies effort, even sacrifice.

If that’s the case, then the artist handling toxic pigments wasn’t being careless.

They were taking beauty seriously.

For Plato, beauty is not primarily a property of things in the physical world. It belongs to a higher realm—the world of Forms—where everything exists in its perfect, unchanging state. What we encounter—faces, colours, artworks—are only partial reflections of that deeper Beauty. We don’t simply decide something is beautiful; we recognize it, as if it echoes something more fundamental.

That’s also why beauty feels immediate. It doesn’t need to be explained to be felt.

Plato gives beauty a unique role: it’s the most accessible of all Forms through the senses. It becomes a bridge between the physical and the ideal. In the Symposium, he describes an ascent—from attraction to particular things, to patterns, to ideas, and eventually to Beauty itself.

Seen this way, the pursuit of beauty isn’t superficial—it’s directional. It points beyond the object toward something more real. Applied to art, this helps explain why the search for the “right” colour could outweigh practical concerns. The artist isn’t just choosing what looks better, but what feels closer to truth.

While reading about beauty, I kept thinking of a line from The Secret History:

“Death is the mother of beauty.”

I can’t believe I’m quoting Henry Winter here, but bear with me.

Genuine beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. It unsettles. It makes you quiver. It reminds you of the accident of being alive.

To understand that feeling—and what seems to have driven artists to those extremes—we have to move past beauty as something merely “nice.”

For Immanuel Kant, beauty doesn’t sit in the object but in the observer. In his Critique of Judgment, he outlines a few conditions:

• Disinterested satisfaction: true beauty isn’t about wanting to own or use something.

• Purposiveness without purpose: it serves no function beyond being experienced.

• Subjective universality: we feel others should agree with our judgment.

But more importantly, Kant draws a distinction between the beautiful and the sublime.

The beautiful is contained, harmonious, easy to understand.
The sublime is something else.

It is vast, overwhelming, and slightly terrifying. A storm, a cliff, something that reminds you of your own limits. And yet, because you can comprehend it, it produces a strange kind of elevation.

The sublime begins where understanding fails.

A work of art becomes sublime when it exceeds you—when you can’t quite “wrap your head around it,” and it points toward something infinite. It reflects the scale of your own mind back at you.

And who wouldn’t risk something for that?

This is where it clicked for me, years ago, and never really left. I don’t want to be beautiful. I want to be perceived as sublime.

To be beautiful is to be harmonious, symmetrical, easy to grasp.
To be sublime is to be overwhelming, difficult to contain.

For me, a perfect example and embodiment of Sublime in art is Francisco de Goya.

His work epitomizes the terrifying sublime, a concept popularized by philosopher Edmund Burke. While traditional "beauty" provides pleasure and harmony, the sublime evokes awe, terror, and overwhelming emotion by confronting the viewer with pain, danger, and the vastness of the unknown.

Unlike artists who showed nature's power, Goya showed that humanity itself is a "sublime force," often through depictions of its darkest impulses, madness, and irrationality.

And you know what? He used all the toxic pigments available in the market.

In 1792, at age 46, Goya suffered a sudden, severe illness with symptoms including paralysis, vertigo, blindness, and mental confusion. While theories like syphilis or viral infections exist, many experts point to lead poisoning (saturnism) due to his “eccentric” painting style—he reportedly “slapped” on paint with sponges, rags, and even his thumbs, significantly increasing his physical contact with these toxins.

This physical decline is often cited as the catalyst for his shift toward the dark, “sublime” imagery of his later years.

The sublime carries tension—between life and death, control and collapse. It only exists because of the threat of destruction. Without that, it becomes decoration.

And suddenly, the toxic pigment makes sense again.

Artists chose colours that were literally killing them because their intensity felt more alive than safer alternatives. The beauty was heightened by its proximity to danger.

At the same time, those pigments were stable. Permanent. We used poison to make something that would outlast us.

We traded our bodies for the longevity of the work.

And that is both insane—and completely, unmistakably human.

Green is the fourth colour of the series, but everything started here, with blue.

THE RANTER

Rants of an Art Curator Pt.8

If you’ve been wondering what I’ve been up to lately, the answer is both nothing and far too much. The kind that happens when you stop performing your life online and suddenly have to actually live it…

Read more

5 months ago · 8 likes · 4 comments · María Ruiz

In my thirty years of existence, I’ve given my poor parents a few reasons to wonder whether I might belong somewhere on the spectrum. One of the earliest had to do with this colour.

By the tender age of seven, I entered what my mother still refers to as “Maria’s green period”—a phase so intense it remains family lore to this day. One day, without warning or explanation, I decided that green was not just my favorite color, but my entire personality.

Every piece of clothing I owned had to be green. All of them. Anything that wasn’t simply stayed untouched in the wardrobe. My backpack? Green. My favorite Powerpuff Girl? Of course—Buttercup. I couldn’t explain it then, and I still can’t quite explain it now, but I loved that color with a strange, almost magnetic devotion.

I would even spend long stretches of time staring into the mirror, captivated by my own eyes, just because they carried a hint of green.

But eyes—that’s a separate obsession entirely. One that deserves its own story.

Unlike red and yellow, which are found abundantly in natural earth pigments, stable greens have often required more alchemy—fermenting, grinding, binding, and sometimes even risking toxicity.

Green is everywhere in our planet, yet, it wasn’t found in art until Egyptian times.

Perhaps the oldest known green pigments are derived from 'malachite', a basic copper carbonate mineral.

The pigment has been seen in Ancient Egyptian tomb paintings, and often in paintings depicting one of the most important Egyptian deities, Osiris, in which his skin was painted bright green.

Osiris was a god of the dead whose wife, Isis, magically conceived a son, Horus, and the ancient Egyptians believed that he could help them make their way to an eternal paradise which bore a striking resemblance to their earthly lives (but without any pain or suffering). This wonderful place was sometimes called “field of malachite”.

Earth and fertility gods such as Geb and Osiris are depicted with green skin, indicating their power to encourage the growth of vegetation. However, the ancient Egyptians recognized the cycle of growth and decay, and so green was also associated with death and the power of resurrection.

The ancient Romans came up with the solution to soak copper plates in wine to create verdigris, a green pigment that comes after weathering the metal. This is the same green hue you would see today on patinated metal roofs, old coins, or sculptures. The ancient Romans used this pigment for mosaics, frescoes, and stained glass.

It became malachite’s replacement quite quickly for its versatility when it came to mediums. You see, here was one of the fewer times in history that humans favored a color because it was easier to obtain and work with, and not because it was “more beautiful”.

Malachite, did not work well with oil medium. Malachite is a mineral (basic copper carbonate) that depends on its crystalline structure to produce a strong color. It must be ground coarsely to maintain a vibrant green. The more finely it is ground to create a smooth, buttery oil paint, the paler and grayer it becomes. When ground finely for oil painting, malachite loses its saturation, appearing as a “dingy and ashy color” rather than a bright green. And artists were not having it.

Verdigris was a favorite among the Old Masters, who admired its vivid, jewel-like green. It can be found in the works of Jan van Eyck who layered it delicately to achieve lifelike foliage and fabrics in his oil paintings and Leonardo da Vinci who experimented with it in mixtures to capture the shifting tones of nature.

The colour green soon became the colour of the gentry, as red represented nobility and brown and grey represented peasants.

The bride in The Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck (1434) wears a bright green dress, signifying the status and wealth of her family.

But that is not the only interesting detail of this painting, which is covered in anecdotes and smalls hints of who this couple was. But that painting, deserves its own rant.

In 1775, Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele invented a deadly, bright green hue made with the toxic chemical, arsenite. Called Scheele’s Green, it was so popular that by the end of the 19th century, it had replaced the earlier mineral and vegetable dyes. But at what cost.

It was so poisonous that provoked death to whose were exposed for too long to it.

People used it on walls, paintings, dresses and even kids toys. Now we know that if something comes from arsenic is just not safe, you’ll die and just get away from it. But not Victorian humans.

Either they did not know or they liked the tragedy and the slow decay that being surrounded n that green provided. And I am saying this because Victorians were delulu. They would kill themselves for a sickly (literally) weak standard. Seriously, they got tuberculosis ON PURPOSE.

By the end of the 19th century, a similar pigment called Paris Green replaced Scheele’s Green. However, it was still highly toxic. This was the pigment used by French Impressionists such as Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir to create their lush green landscapes. Some believe the pigment may have been responsible for Cézanne’s diabetes and Monet’s blindness. Paris Green was eventually banned in the 1960s.

Claude Monet’s painting, “Bridge over water pond of lilies” is not just one painting, but a serie of the same bridge and the same water pond through the years, where we can see how Monet’s cataracts developed, the colours and shapes changed and twisted, making his late paintings almost abstract and terribly beautiful.

The further I go in this rabbit hole of pigments and colours the more I color myself surprised of how we survived as a specie when we have zero survival instinct when it comes to beauty.

Humans may be willing to face death or take extreme risks in the pursuit of beauty because it is tied to fundamental human instincts, the drive for meaning, and the desperate desire to defy mortality.

Beauty evokes a feeling of awe, a powerful emotional experience that feels "bigger" than the self. This experience makes people feel more alive, filling the emptiness that can come with monotonous existence.

Next colour soon.

I’m writing this on Maundy Thursday. What started as a continuation of my colour series ended up becoming a reflection on Holy Week, art, and my dearly missed Southern Spain.

This is an unsolicited piece of my mind and my constant conflict of faith.

Holy Week is the annual Christian commemoration of the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, celebrated between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday. It is the most important liturgical period in Christianity, marking the end of Lent and symbolizing redemption.

Where I’m from, it’s tradition—mixed with art and a lot of feeling.

Holy Week processions are grand public displays of faith in which religious brotherhoods (known as cofradías or hermandades) parade through the streets carrying magnificent floats. Originating in the 16th century as a way to “teach” the story of the Passion to the public, these events have evolved into a complex blend of art, music, and deep-rooted tradition.

All of the floats are masterpieces. Not the kind found in museums, but, in my humble opinion, they have nothing to envy from the great paintings in The Louvre. They are stunning, expressive, intense, and overwhelming.

But it’s not just the floats—it’s everything.

It’s the growing intensity of hundreds of drums and trumpets accompanying them. It’s the smell of incense, the thousands of people packed into narrow streets, split in two like the Red Sea so the procession can pass through—backs pressed against centuries-old walls, or walking backwards just to not miss a single moment. I’ve seen people climb light posts, trees, anything they can. Because once you get a glimpse of it, you can’t stop looking.

It’s the endless lines of nazarenos and mantillas accompanying the floats. And the group of people beneath them, carrying thousands of kilos on their necks and backs. Faceless believers, dropping to their knees on ancient cobblestones for hours on end, simply because their faith is stronger than the pain they can bear that day.

And that makes me absurdly jealous.

Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) viewed faith not as intellectual certainty, but as a passionate, individual commitment to God—a “leap” into uncertainty. He argued that faith is valuable precisely because it is absurd, requiring a “fear and trembling” experience that represents the highest stage of human existence.

I would like to exist in that highest stage. But I am consciously stuck in the ethical one.

I admire those whose lives feel lighter and more certain because they believe that, even if everything goes wrong, at the end of the day, God is there. It would be comforting not to live with the constant, nagging thought of a meaningless life and an uncertain death.

But circling back.

In my hometown, Holy Week is something you have to witness.

A city that was once a Muslim kingdom for centuries. A city that cradles The Alhambra and countless other Islamic monuments. A place with so many churches that from any rooftop, you see bell towers in every direction. Chaotic urban planning, neighborhoods clinging to impossible hills, all contained within ancient walls. A place where Catholicism is deeply rooted, while Arabic words are still part of daily language.

And then, into all of that, a week-long parade of masterpieces.

Something in that convergence of beauty makes you believe—even if only for a second.

And what a beautiful thing that is.

I once saw, while walking along El Paseo de los Tristes under thousands of candles with the Alhambra above us, my Danish boyfriend—a software developer with not a single trace of faith in his body—reach out and touch a float, as if something told him to do it.

At the time, I thought it was funny. Now, I still wonder what compelled him.

There are many ways to look at this week, and I’ve stood on several sides.

Then suddenly, a gypsy woman steps onto her balcony and sings—serenading Christ, the Virgin, or both.From a sociological and historical perspective, the tension between “richness” and “frivolity” often comes down to institutional power versus spiritual essence.

This critique is not new. It comes from a more “prophetic” or “ascetic” perspective—one that prioritizes spirit over object.

There is the contrast with the Gospel: the irony of gold-laden processions commemorating a man who lived as a poor carpenter and died as a criminal. For some, the spectacle contradicts the message of humility.

There is the idea of aesthetic distraction: that the show becomes an end in itself. People attend for the music, the art, the atmosphere, without any intention of moral or spiritual change. The ritual becomes a performance rather than a prayer.

And there is institutional vanity: the perception that material richness reflects accumulated power, where attention shifts from meaning to ornament—from message to display.

I grew up Catholic. Not force-fed religion, but deeply influenced by it. My family is Catholic, my surroundings are Catholic—but I am not, at least not really.

From a young age, I questioned faith. By adolescence, those questions became sharper, louder, more confrontational. I distanced myself from the Church as an institution and often rejected it entirely.

I saw believers as naïve, and I rarely missed an opportunity to criticize religion.

And yet, as tradition dictated, I would still attend my neighborhood’s procession, Pasión y Estrella. And every single time, I would feel close to tears watching people I knew—friends, classmates—carry the figures of Christ and the Virgin through steep streets. They would emerge with bruised and bleeding necks, take a sip of water, and return beneath the weight.

All for something I did not believe in.

I cry easily—that’s true.

But I cannot explain the knot in my chest every time I witness it.

I still believe that the money invested in these objects could be used to help those who need it. It saddens me that we, as humans, are capable of creating such beauty—and yet struggle to show basic respect for one another. Which, at its core, was the message of Jesus.

But on the other hand—my more selfish, aesthetic-driven side—

Holy Week is an extraordinary experience.

It transcends its religious origins and becomes a masterclass in communal identity, artistry, and shared history. In this light, its richness is not vanity, but a living museum that belongs to the people.

The processions showcase centuries of craftsmanship, passed down through generations. Families preserve these traditions not as displays of wealth, but as tributes to their ancestors’ skill.

They allow an entire city to step into a shared narrative. Even for the non-religious, the music—the haunting saetas—the scent of incense, the glow of candlelight, all create an atmosphere that binds people together.

From this perspective, the gold and silver are not hoarded wealth, but public art. Unlike pieces confined to galleries, these works are brought into the streets—for everyone.

The smells of beeswax and orange blossom, the sound of drums and brass, the slow rhythm of movement—these form a cultural language that defines identity.

Even psychologically, the drama of the week offers something valuable: a structured way to process grief, suffering, and hope, together.

Seriously, witnessing one of those floats struggle through the Albayzin—passing beneath Islamic arches in a historically Muslim neighborhood—while candlelight casts a glow that feels both haunting and divine… it’s something else.

The air is thick with incense. People are packed together like sardines, collectively holding their breath, because it seems impossible that such massive floats could pass through streets barely wide enough for one person. And yet, those carrying them manage it—every single year.

The music continues, steady and solemn. And all of it unfolds with the Alhambra rising quietly in the background. The mix of cultures, is just insane, yet still, works perfectly.

All of this is overwhelming for someone who loves art and beauty.

And I am one of those people.

Perhaps that is where I stand.

Not in faith, and not in rejection—but somewhere in between, where beauty itself becomes a form of meaning.

This color is everywhere in nature. As far back as 300,000 years ago, humans were already using yellow pigments to decorate their bodies.

It appears in flowers, plants, animals, earth, metals, and stones. It’s in the sky above us, long venerated as the sun and its light for thousands of years.

Yellow is also one of the oldest colors used in human art, with yellow ochre pigments found in cave paintings dating back over 17,000 years. In the Lascaux caves in France, we can even find yellow-painted horses.

As I mentioned in my previous post, ochre (in this case, yellow) was derived from iron-rich clay deposits. These were mixed with water to create a pigment that could be applied using tools, fingers, or even sprayed from the mouth.

Depending on the amount of iron in the clay, ochre tones range from yellow to red, covering a wide spectrum of warm, earthy hues.

But as we’ve learned time and time again, humans don’t settle for what is easy, safe, and stable. No—we’re more than willing to throw all of that out the window in the name of beauty.

Yellow ochre could have been enough. But it wasn’t. Which brings us to the next pigment: Orpiment Yellow.

Orpiment Yellow is a highly toxic arsenic sulfide mineral, used since antiquity (around 3100 BCE) for its brilliant lemon-yellow color. Known as “king’s yellow” or auripigmentum (“gold paint”), it appeared in Egyptian, Asian, and European art.

In Egypt, it was used in tomb murals, on papyrus, and even as eye shadow (yes, arsenic). Because of its golden luster, it often substituted for gold in paintings. Egyptians believed their gods had gold skin and bones, so this pigment was used to depict deities—and, interestingly, women as well.

Yellow became closely associated with gold, which was considered the “flesh of the gods,” symbolizing immortality and perfection.

Women were often depicted with yellow skin as a sign of indoor life and higher social status, protected from the sun, while men were painted in darker tones to reflect outdoor labor.

I can, unfortunately, relate. As a fellow Mediterranean, if I’m not tan, I’m about as close to Orpiment Yellow as one can get without people wondering about liver failure.

Beyond Egypt, Orpiment was widely used in Chinese art, including manuscripts and the murals of the Dunhuang Grottoes, especially during the Tang Dynasty. It was also used in lacquerwork, contributing to the rich palette of traditional crafts.

These murals often prioritize spirit over strict realism. Figures are stylized, with exaggerated movement and form, flying apsaras and mythological figures like Fuxi and Nüwa feel dynamic, almost abstract, despite predating abstraction by centuries.

This has very little to do with yellow, but everything to do with how fascinating I find them.

In Chinese culture, yellow held deep significance, representing imperial power, prosperity, and the center of the universe.

And despite the fact that Orpiment was well known to be extremely toxic (and that safer yellows existed) it remained widely used. Because, once again, humans have absolutely no survival instinct when beauty is involved. It was arsenic, for the love of God.

One notable user of this dangerously beautiful pigment was Rembrandt.

A master of chiaroscuro, he pushed materials to their limits to achieve that signature glow—layering pigments, sometimes toxic ones, to make skin, fabric, and light feel alive in a way that still leaves us in awe.

Alongside Orpiment, another major pigment appears in these works: Lead-Tin Yellow.

This bright, opaque pigment was widely used in European painting from the 13th to the early 18th century, particularly during the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Known as the “yellow of the old masters,” it appears in the works of artists like Vermeer, Titian, and Rembrandt.

It gained popularity for its stability, opacity, and vibrant tone. Compared to Orpiment, it was a slightly less terrifying alternative—though still very much not human-friendly, thanks to its lead content.

Vermeer, in particular, used Lead-Tin Yellow extensively. Known as a slow, meticulous “jewelry box” painter, he produced only around 35 works in his lifetime. Every color choice was deliberate.

This yellow passed the test—bright, relatively stable, and just toxic enough to fit in with the rest of his palette, alongside ultramarine blue (which left him in debt) and cadmium red.

By around 1750, Lead-Tin Yellow fell out of use due to the discovery of new pigments, the loss of its manufacturing process, and confusion with other yellows.

Then, in 1797, Louis Vauquelin introduced Chrome Yellow.

With its strong covering power and vivid yellow-to-orange hues, it quickly became popular among 19th-century artists like Turner, Monet, and, most famously, Van Gogh.

And while Turner and Monet were exceptional, let’s be honest, Van Gogh was the true ambassador of Chrome Yellow.

He loved yellow. Deeply.

For him, it represented warmth, hope, sunlight, and life itself—especially during his time in the south of France. Yellow became a way to express something emotional, almost spiritual.

New synthetic pigments allowed him to push color further than ever before, achieving an intensity that natural pigments simply couldn’t match. While many of his contemporaries stayed within traditional palettes, Van Gogh embraced these new materials as part of a broader avant-garde movement.

When he died, his coffin was covered in yellow flowers, sunflowers and yellow dahlias.

So I guess the lesson is simple: give us a beautiful yellow, and we’ll ignore the arsenic every single time, and honestly, I’d probably do the same.

Next colour soon.

Hint, we don’t let go of arsenic for a single second.

Blue owns my heart but I cannot look better than in RED.

Red is in the human DNA and blood (literally) and metaphorically. It’s the first colour babies see after black and white, and the first color humans had a word for.

This is due to it’s availability in nature, unlikely blue, red is everywhere in our planet. It’s in the earth.

This earthy red, called red ochre was out first pigment, (alongside black) used for body painting, smearing the pigment in our skin and caves since at least 75000 years ago.

Ochre is a family of natural earth pigments that offers a palette of yellows, oranges, browns and reds. Red ochre in particular, owes it’s hue to hematite. A mineral rich in iron oxide. This red was easy to subtract. The stones were grinder to dust and mixed with a medium such as saliva and animal fat. Then using the fingers as brush was used on skin or any cave surface that could be reached by our ancestors.
(Easy method compared to blue, eh?)

Neanderthals used this pigment as far back as 250000 years ago, to decorate their bodies. In the Neolithic era, the pigment was used symbolically in ritual burial contexts, representing a return to earth or possibly rebirth.

In art, the earliest uses of red ochre pigment can be traced back to the Upper Paleolithic Period, as seen in the red bison cave paintings of Altamira, Spain, dated between 16,500 and 15,000 BCE.

The reason why our Paleolithic ancestors painted so many of these motifs (especially in Spain!) still remains unknown. Sadly, traveling back in time is not possible—and even if it were, I really think we wouldn’t have much time to ask before being most likely hit in the head with a stone by our twenty-times-great grandfather. But many resources and theories point to a very rudimentary—yet less ridiculous—version of The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, where hunters would paint what they wanted to happen during the next hunt with the intention of manifesting that outcome. Caveman vision board, to be brief here.

Evidence suggests early cultures were attaching magical, symbolic properties to the potent pigment – it was scattered over the graves of the dead as a form of respectful ritual, seeping into the ground and even staining their bones, signaling a return to the earth or rebirth in the afterlife. Warriors in many tribes also covered weapons, objects, animals, and trees in red paint, believing it would lend them magical, supernatural powers.

Evidence of red ochre continued throughout the centuries as civilizations developed, appearing across Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Russia and Australia. In ancient Egypt, red minerals were abundant in the landscape, leading them to play a prominent cultural role. In paintings, red was more commonly used to portray men’s skin, but Egyptian women were often painted wearing red clothing and used the red ochre pigment to stain their lips and cheeks, invoking some of the early sexualized associations that were to come with the colour red. Both men and women dyed their clothing red, or painted their bodies with red ochre during celebrations, associating the colour with life, health and victory. They also tapped into its healing properties, using red ochre as a medicinal salve for intestinal and eye problems.

Living at the same time—but with a popularity almost as big as ultramarine blue (and a price)—we have the brightest of the reds: vermilion red.

Brighter than ochre and deadly to mine, it is made from a natural mineral called cinnabar. Cinnabar is a bright scarlet to brick-red mineral composed of mercury sulfide. The most significant long-term mining site is in Almadén, Spain, which has produced cinnabar for over 2,000 years—being responsible for countless deaths directly related to extraction and prolonged exposure. Yet, it was too beautiful to blame.

Natural vermilion was the most expensive pigment used by the Romans for wall paintings.

Perhaps the most famous set of red frescoes from the Roman Empire are those in the so-called "Villa of the Mysteries" in Pompeii, in which an enigmatic set of figures perform arcane rituals on a scarlet background.

Vermilion red was a favourite in artists’ palettes from antiquity to the 20th century, when this dangerous pigment was substituted by the less lethal and cheaper cadmium red.

This is where names start to get tricky. Ancient authors used the word “vermilion” to describe the pigment made from grinding up cinnabar. But vermilion also refers to the synthetic version of the color, invented in China thousands of years before it was brought to the West by Arab alchemists during the Middle Ages.

This synthetic version became central to Chinese culture, used in imperial lacquerware, calligraphy ink, and personal name stamps.

Historically, vermilion was a color of nobility. During the Ming Dynasty, it connoted high status because the ruling family's surname, Zhu (朱), literally means "vermilion".

In Taoist culture, vermilion is regarded as the color of life and eternity, as it visually resembles blood. It is believed to ward off evil spirits. This is why temple walls, palace gates, and front doors are often painted this shade.

For centuries much of European painting depicted Christian themes and biblical events. The Christian tradition gives us one of the most important reds in Western art history, the blood of Christ. It was considered a potent symbol of sacrifice and redemption, and was often portrayed with dramatic realism to evoke strong emotion from the beholder.

Because of its affinity with the blood of Christ, red was considered the colour of authority within the Catholic Church.

This vermilion was used extensively by Renaissance painters, including Titian, who is renowned for his luxuriant reds.

And Titian loved to paint the Holy Mary. And I love a rant about Holy Mary.

Now you might think about my last post discussing Marian blue and how Old Masters painted the Virgin Mary’s clothes in ultramarine because of the luxurious nature of the pigment and devotion toward her—and suddenly she is also wearing bright red. Funny.

Well, while the Madonna is often in blue, Flemish masters often depicted her in vibrant red to signify her sacred status. It was also used for the robes of saints to signify passion or saintly fervor.

If you are wondering: no, a Madonna and the Virgin Mary are not different—and yes, they are at the same time. Catholic mysteries.

“Madonna” and “Virgin Mary” refer to the same person—the mother of Jesus Christ—but differ in usage. “Virgin Mary” is the theological name of the biblical figure, while “Madonna” is an Italian term of endearment (“my lady”) used to describe artworks of Mary, often holding the infant Jesus.

Madonna imagery often shows her as a maternal or queenly figure holding the Christ child, emphasizing her role as a protective mother and intercessor.

Long story short: a “Madonna” is often represented in ultramarine blue, while the “Virgin Mary” is often represented in vermilion red.

She can also be depicted wearing both colours, highlighting her dual role as both human and Queen of Heaven. Blue symbolizes the sky, heaven, and the divine; red represents the earthly, the human, and blood. Together, they reflect her dual nature.

But circling back to the Renaissance.

Red has long been associated with love and desire. In Anthony van Dyck’s ‘Portrait of a Woman, possibly Isabella Cattaneo Della Volta Imperiale’, she wears a red rose tucked behind her ear. The red rose, a symbol of romantic love, mirrors the flushing of her lips and cheeks and draws a visual connection between the flower’s beauty and her own.

The sensuality of red takes monumental form in Peter Paul Rubens’s ‘Samson and Delilah’. Samson sleeps on Delilah’s lap, oblivious to the accomplice cutting his hair – the source of his supernatural strength. Delilah’s rich crimson robe, dishevelled and luxurious, is a sensual focal point in the scene of Samson’s betrayal.

But red being the colour of love, passion and inhibitions it’s nothing new.

It represent our blood, our heart, fire and warmth.

Represents strong feelings, power, demands attention like no other colour.

I felt like I reached success in my adult life when I finally owned my first red Chanel lipstick. My nails are almost always painted in crimson red. Once, I had to get a gala dress, and my eyes went straight to a vermilion one. And let me tell you—as someone who is normally quite self-conscious—I felt powerful in it. Nothing screams “life” louder than a field of poppies.

If you want to feel powerful, wear red.

I am from Granada, a small city in the south of Spain. Once conquered by the Muslim Empire, it is home to a marvel of the modern world: the Alhambra, whose name derives from the Arabic al-Ḥamrāʼ, meaning “the Red One” or “the Red Fortress.” This refers to the distinct reddish colour of its walls, built from local iron-rich rammed earth.

And if you think the reddish hue of its walls is beautiful and captivating, it’s because you haven’t seen it during a clear sunset. Then it looks even redder, stunning and haunting in the best possible way. Even though I lived in front of it for most of my life, it never failed—and still doesn’t—to leave me gasping for air.

Again, if you want something to be powerful, do it in red. A statement, a painting, a castle, it doesn’t matter.

But last, let’s dive into a mercury–less red. Cadmium Red.

Cadmium red, a brilliant and opaque pigment, was developed in the early 20th century following the 1817 discovery of the element cadmium by Friedrich Stromeyer. While cadmium yellows emerged earlier, cadmium red became commercially available around 1910–1919. Known for its permanence and intensity, it was popularized by Henri Matisse.

Henri Matisse was marveled by cadmium red because of for its exceptional brilliance, high opacity, and stability as a modern pigment.

He used cadmium red to intentionally flatten three-dimensional spaces, creating a, "harmonious space" where objects would seem to "fall out of the frame". Matisse prized the pigment for its "fiery boldness" and ability to create a deep, blood-red hue that was far more vibrant than the traditional, often muted, vermilion.

Matisse's bold use of cadmium red eventually paved the way for later "color field" painters like Mark Rothko. (I promise this is the last bit.)

Mark Rothko was obsessed with red because he viewed it as the most primal and emotionally versatile color, capable of expressing the full range of human experience from ecstasy to tragedy. For Rothko, red was not just a decorative choice; it was a “prime agent” of spiritual and metaphysical drama. (Amen to that.)

Rothko used red to bypass traditional symbols and directly trigger "basic human emotions" like doom and ecstasy. He famously stated that if you were only moved by the color relationships, you missed the point of his art. Rothko's commitment to the color was so deep that he often mixed his own pigments, including Lithol Red, to achieve specific, haunting depths of shade that commercial paints couldn't provide.

Vermeer was obsessed with blue and died in debt for using it constantly as a statement in his paintings. Rothko was obsessed with red and its emotional versatility.

One thing is clear after diving into another colour: humans will do anything for beauty. It doesn’t matter if it needs to be extracted from a stone—or if we die intoxicated by it.

Next colour soon.

Without social media, time expands. You look around more. You notice things you forgot were there.

Seriously, suddenly birds fascinate me as much as they fascinate my four kilos Yorkshire Terrier.

And at some point you understand, in a slightly disturbing way, how Seneca could spend pages thinking about perception, how toddlers can stare at absolutely nothing for an hour, how the painters of Impressionism were not being poetic. They were being precise.

So I wanted to write something that actually matters. Not just a rant about how much I hate Basquiat copycats, although that rant is alive and well and waiting. Something more fundamental.

Colour.

Colour theory is unhinged. Colour history is worse.

I started with a small book on colour and meaning in Ancient Rome and immediately lost my mind a little. A beautiful piece of academia written by Mark Bradley. The book approaches color theory from the ancient philosophers perspective. From their understanding of the rainbow, as a physics phenomenon and the colour wheel to the meaning of the colours during those times.

I read that, closed the book, stared at a wall for a while, and decided to commit to this properly.

This is going to be a series. Each color gets its own moment.

We’re starting with the youngest, and somehow the most everywhere.

Blue.

Everything is blue. The sky, the ocean, the way distance itself looks. From space, Earth is just blue. Yuri Gagarin described it that way, like it was the only thing worth mentioning.

And yet blue is one of the rarest colors in nature.

Which already feels like a contradiction we should not be comfortable with.

Blue was one of the last colors humans properly named. Not because it did not exist, but because we did not isolate it. Language trains perception. You do not see what you do not define.

Early humans worked with what they had. Blacks, reds, ochres. Earth and fire. Blue barely appears. And then, around 13,000 years ago, there are traces of it in Europe. Azurite. A small intrusion. Almost hesitant.

Then the Egyptians do something completely unreasonable.

They invent blue.

Not find it. Make it. I guess if they had the wit for making the pyramids and touch the sky, they could also bottle up its colour.

Egyptian blue is the first synthetic pigment in history. Sand, copper compounds like malachite, limestone, ash, heat. It sounds less like art and more like a chemistry experiment that got out of hand. A very early, very elegant version of Walter White behavior.

This blue spreads. Across Egyptian, Greek, Roman worlds. On walls, on sculptures, on objects meant for the living and the dead. It becomes part of visual language.

And then the Roman Empire collapses, and apparently the recipe collapses with it.

Egyptian blue disappears. Completely. No instructions left behind. Just gone.

Which leaves Europe with something far more dramatic.

Ultramarine.

The name means “beyond the sea,” which already sounds expensive. And it is. It comes from lapis lazuli mined in Afghanistan, transported across continents, ground down, purified until only that impossible blue remains.

More expensive than gold.

Not metaphorically. Literally.

So naturally, it becomes a status symbol. A theological statement. A financial decision disguised as devotion.

During the Renaissance, ultramarine is not just used, it is displayed.

Walk into the Scrovegni Chapel and look up. Giotto covers the ceiling in a blue so deep it almost feels artificial. A night sky that does not recede, it absorbs you.

I genuinely do not want to know how much that ceiling cost. I do, however, want to be present when Enrico Scrovegni received the bill. Just the pigments alone must have been enough to trigger an at least two days long existential crisis.

I have seen a modern version of that moment. Standing next to my mother, buying my first proper oil paints for my fine arts degree, watching her face as the total kept climbing. And I was not even touching real ultramarine.

For that, we can thank Jean-Baptiste Guimet. We will get there.

The obsession with ultramarine was extreme.

Michelangelo ran out of it while painting The Entombment. The patron cut the budget. The ultramarine stopped. Michelangelo refused to replace it with a cheaper blue. He would rather leave parts unfinished than compromise. And well, he died without finishing it.

Which is both ridiculous and completely understandable.

Johannes Vermeer went the other direction. He used ultramarine constantly. Not just where it made sense, but everywhere. Small details, shadows, fabrics. That glow in his paintings is not an accident, it is financial irresponsibility.

He died in debt.

Still worth it.

And across Europe, ultramarine became tied to the Virgin Mary. Patrons paying absurd amounts just to wrap her in that specific blue.

If you were raised Catholic, that blue stays with you.

It definitely stayed with me.

My grandmother had one or two prints of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo’s Immaculate Conception.

My mother carries a small stamp of the Virgin in her purse to this day. The robes always the same blue.

And there is a reason for that.

When I was born, something went wrong. I was taken away immediately for tests. My mother stayed behind, alone, convinced something was seriously wrong. Crying, waiting, not knowing.

At some point, a woman walked into the room. No one knows who she was. She handed my mother a small stamp of the Virgin Mary, wrapped in that intense blue, and told her everything would be fine.

Then she left.

A couple of hours later, the doctors came back with me and good news.

So my mother named me Maria.

Which means “of the sea”, and what is the sea but blue.

You can believe that or not. I am not here to convince you. But that blue, that exact blue, has been following me my entire life.

I used to say my favorite color was purple. It sounded better. More intentional.

It was never purple.

It was always blue.

The blue just after sunset. The blue of hydrangeas. The blue on a magpie’s wings. The blue fields near my grandfather’s farmhouse in the summer, stretching into the sky until you could not tell where one ended and the other began.

Even blue eyes made me irrationally jealous.

I wanted all of it.

Which means I am not that different from Michelangelo or Johannes Vermeer, just significantly less talented and with a much smaller budget.

For god’s sake. The other day I bought a Philips Hue bulb and the default color is blue. I am not a ratty streamer with Temu LED, I am a art curator who willingly decided that, the bedroom light was going to be blue. That blue hour blue. And my poor boyfriend (who has the bluest eyes) just went with it.

But circling back to the topic.

While ultramarine was dominating painting, another blue was taking over everything else.

Indigo.

Today it is everywhere. Denim, uniforms, daily life. But for a long time, it was just as rare, just as loaded.

Imported, expensive, difficult.

And the process to obtain it is absurdly complicated.

You take the leaves of the indigo plant. Soak them. Let them ferment. The water turns yellow. Chemical transformations happen. It oxidizes into blue. You mix it with alkaline solutions, press it into cakes, dry it, grind it.

All of this just to get blue.

At this point it becomes obvious. We are not rational about this color. We will mine it out of stone, extract it from plants, or invent it from scratch if necessary.

Which is exactly what happens in the 19th century.

Chemists like Jean-Baptiste Guimet synthesize ultramarine, saves our pockets and democratizes what once was reserved for the divine.

Blue spreads everywhere. Art, fashion, industry. It loses exclusivity, but not meaning.

In 1957, Yves Klein creates his own version of blue. International Klein Blue.

Not just a pigment, but an idea.

He works with chemists to preserve the intensity of ultramarine in its purest form. The result feels almost unreal. Flat, but infinite. Like a surface that refuses to behave like one.

Klein was deeply interested in spirituality. In the idea of emptiness that is not empty.

He once said, “At first there is nothing, then there is a profound nothingness, after that a blue profundity.”

It sounds dramatic until you stand in front of one of his works and feel your sense of space shift slightly.

Like looking at the sky for too long.

Which, again, brings us back to where we started.

Blue is everywhere. Constant, unavoidable.

And still unstable.

In literature it means calm and despair at the same time. Infinity and longing. Something you can never quite reach.

In music, it bends. The blues. Notes that fall just short of where they should be, creating that almost human sound. Not perfect, not clean, but alive.

A color we had to fight to obtain, to name, to understand.

And one we still have not fully pinned down.

Which is probably why we keep chasing it.

Next colour soon.