Cobalt Blue: Al, O, Co

Suzanne Caporael’s conceptually-based abstraction Cobalt Blue: Al, O, Co is a visual representation of the constituent ingredients of a paint pigment. Part of the Elements of Pigment series, the hand-painted etching is analogous to a designer’s color chart, here depicting the “before” and “after” of mixing aluminum (Al), oxygen (O), and cobalt (Co) in the form of the inorganic compounds aluminum chloride and cobalt chloride. When heated, these compounds yield cobalt oxide and aluminum oxide, the main components of cobalt blue (azure) pigment. Caporael’s painted blocks of color mirror the rectilinear shapes formed by the stanzas of a poem as printed on a page. For Cobalt Blue, she selected a poem by acclaimed American poet Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) to serve as her compositional template. Entitled Plaint, the poem’s three stanza-shapes are arranged on the left-hand side of the sheet, each painted a different color corresponding to the pigment’s constituent elements. On the right, the stanzas are combined into a single shape painted in a single color.