The Bauhaus artist and theorist Josef Albers declared that a color’s quintessence “is of less concern than what it does.” Richard J. Powell’s talk revisits this idea through the cool and relatively modern color viridian. A dark green-blue hue, viridian and its professed theatricality were not only commented upon by Albers, but also “cast” in countless paintings by artist Jacob Lawrence, a looming 20th-century figure of narrative art and visual modernism. 

This is the second talk of the six-part series “Colorstruck! Painting, Pigment, Affect,” presented by Richard J. Powell of Duke University for the 71st A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts.