Leonardo da Vinci: part 1. Experiment

Just checking to see if these JPGS will show up in readable fashion.

Georges Braque

Violin and Candlestick

From Wikipedia
Georges Braque (13 May 1882 – 31 August 1963) was a major 20th century French painter and sculptor who, along with Pablo Picasso, developed the art style known as Cubism.

Early life Georges Braque was born on 13 May 1882, in Argenteuil, Val-d'Oise. He grew up in Le Havre and trained to be a house painter and decorator like his father and grandfather. However, he also studied artistic painting during evenings at the École des Beaux-Arts, in Le Havre, from about 1897 to 1899. In Paris, he apprenticed with a decorator and was awarded his certificate in 1902. The next year, he attended the Académie Humbert, also in Paris, and painted there until 1904. It was here that he met Marie Laurencin and Francis Picabia.

Fauvism
His earliest works were impressionistic, but after seeing the work exhibited by the artistic group known as the "Fauves" (Beasts) in 1905, Braque adopted a Fauvist style. The Fauves, a group that included Henri Matisse and André Derain among others, used brilliant colors to represent emotional response. Braque worked most closely with the artists Raoul Dufy and Othon Friesz, who shared Braque's hometown of Le Havre, to develop a somewhat more subdued Fauvist style. In 1906, Braque traveled with Friesz to L'Estaque, to Antwerp, and home to Le Havre to paint.

In May 1907, he successfully exhibited works of the Fauve style in the Salon des Indépendants. The same year, Braque's style began a slow evolution as he became influenced by Paul Cézanne, who had died in 1906, and whose works were exhibited in Paris for the first time in a large-scale, museum-like retrospective in September 1907. The 1907 Cézanne retrospective at the Salon d'Automne greatly affected the avant-garde artists of Paris, resulting in the advent of Cubism.

Cubism
Braque's paintings of 1908–1913 reflected his new interest in geometry and simultaneous perspective. He conducted an intense study of the effects of light and perspective and the technical means that painters use to represent these effects, seeming to question the most standard of artistic conventions. In his village scenes, for example, Braque frequently reduced an architectural structure to a geometric form approximating a cube, yet rendered its shading so that it looked both flat and three-dimensional by fragmenting the image. He showed this in the painting "House at L'estaque".

Beginning in 1909, Braque began to work closely with Pablo Picasso, who had been developing a similar style of painting. At the time Pablo Picasso was influenced by Gauguin, Cézanne, African tribal masks and Iberian sculpture, while Braque was interested mainly in developing Cézanne's ideas of multiple perspectives. “A comparison of the works of Picasso and Braque during 1908 reveals that the effect of his encounter with Picasso was more to accelerate and intensify Braque’s exploration of Cézanne’s ideas, rather than to divert his thinking in any essential way.” Braque’s essential subject is the ordinary objects he has known practically forever.

Picasso celebrates animation, while Braque celebrates contemplation. Thus, the invention of Cubism was a joint effort between Picasso and Braque, then residents of Montmartre, Paris. These artists were the style's main innovators. After meeting in October or November 1907, Braque and Picasso, in particular, began working on the development of Cubism in 1908. Both artists produced paintings of monochromatic color and complex patterns of faceted form, now termed Analytic Cubism.

A decisive time of its development occurred during the summer of 1911, when Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso painted side by side in Céret in the French Pyrenees, each artist producing paintings that are difficult—sometimes virtually impossible—to distinguish from those of the other. In 1912, they began to experiment with collage and papier collé.

French art critic Louis Vauxcelles first used the term Cubism, or "bizarre cubiques", in 1908 after seeing a picture by Braque. He described it as 'full of little cubes', after which the term quickly gained wide use although the two creators did not adopt it initially. Art historian Ernst Gombrich described cubism as "the most radical attempt to stamp out ambiguity and to enforce one reading of the picture—that of a man-made construction, a colored canvas." The Cubist style spread quickly throughout Paris and then Europe.

“ The things that Picasso and I said to one another during those years will never be said again, and even if they were, no one would understand them anymore. It was like being roped together on a mountain. ”
— Georges Braque

The two artists' productive collaboration continued and they worked closely together until the beginning of World War I in 1914, when Braque enlisted with the French Army. In May 1915, Braque received a severe head injury in battle at Carency and suffered temporary blindness. He was trepanned, and required a long period of recuperation.

Later work Braque resumed painting in late 1916. Working alone, he began to moderate the harsh abstraction of cubism. He developed a more personal style characterized by brilliant color, textured surfaces, and—after his relocation to the Normandy seacoast—the reappearance of the human figure. He painted many still life subjects during this time, maintaining his emphasis on structure. One example of this is his 1943 work, Blue Guitar, which hangs in the Allen Memorial Art Museum. During his recovery he became a close friend of the cubist artist Juan Gris.

He continued to work during the remainder of his life, producing a considerable number of paintings, graphics, and sculptures. Braque, along with Matisse, is credited for introducing Pablo Picasso to Fernand Mourlot, and most of the lithographs and book illustrations he himself created during the 1940s and '50s were produced at the Mourlot Studios. He died on 31 August 1963, in Paris. He is buried in the cemetery of the Church of St. Valery in Varengeville-sur-Mer, Normandy, whose windows he designed. Braque's work is in most major museums throughout the world.

Style
Braque believed that an artist experienced beauty "… in terms of volume, of line, of mass, of weight, and through that beauty [he] interpret[s] [his] subjective impression...” He described "objects shattered into fragments… [as] a way of getting closest to the object…Fragmentation helped me to establish space and movement in space”. He adopted a monochromatic and neutral color palette in the belief that such a palette would emphasize the subject matter.

Although Braque began his career painting landscapes, during 1908 he, alongside Picasso, discovered the advantages of painting still lifes instead. Braque explained that he “… began to concentrate on still-lifes, because in the still-life you have a tactile, I might almost say a manual space… This answered to the hankering I have always had to touch things and not merely see them… In tactile space you measure the distance separating you from the object, whereas in visual space you measure the distance separating things from each other. This is what led me, long ago, from landscape to still-life” A still life was also more accessible, in relation to perspective, than landscape, and permitted the artist to see the multiple perspectives of the object. Braque's early interest in still lifes revived during the 1930s.

During the period between the wars, Braque exhibited a freer style of Cubism, intensifying his color use and a looser rendering of objects. However, he still remained committed to the cubist method of simultaneous perspective and fragmentation. In contrast to Picasso, who continuously reinvented his style of painting, producing both representational and cubist images, and incorporating surrealist ideas into his work, Braque continued in the Cubist style, producing luminous, other-worldly still life and figure compositions. By the time of his death in 1963, he was regarded as one of the elder statesmen of the School of Paris, and of modern art.

Israeli Art Market on the Rise

From Huffington Post: Israeli Art Market on the Rise
Temperature isn't the only thing heating up in the Middle East -- the Israeli art market is on the rise, attracting international attention. The turnover in the last decade topped $180 million, reaching an all-time high of $36 million in 2007 before the global financial crisis. Though the crisis caused a dip in revenue, signs of recovery were seen starting in the second half of 2009. That said, Israeli art can only demand modest prices, as recent auctions in Tel Aviv and London exemplify. "There's a glass ceiling in Israeli art, unfortunately ... contemporary artists cannot obtain above €50,000-60,000, and I think it will take time for these prices to rise because the market is still developing and opening," says Tel Aviv gallery owner Shiri Benartzi. Currently, Mordechai Ardon holds the Israeli art record with a hammer price of $643,200 for Timepecker.

Israeli auction house Tiroche recently held a two-part Israeli and International Art sale on January 28th and February 4th to great success. Part A saw a 88% sell through rate, and of the 315 lots sold, 199 exceeded their high estimates. The realized prices were also optimistic, with the top three lots all going to Nahum Gutman for $178,250, $149,500 (pictured above), and $126,500. Another notable achievement was realized for Lesser Ury, whose Landscape sold for $74,750 (pictured left), nearly four times its estimate.Part B also reached a similarly high sell through rate, but with much tamer bids.

Still, there would appear to be a huge difference between the auctions held abroad and those in Tel Aviv, at least when comparing Bonhams' luck to Tiroche's. Last year Bonhams teamed up with Tel Aviv auction house Montefiore to sell items at its New Bond Street location. Their latest Israeli Art and Judaica sale on February 29th concluded with less-than-successful results: of 119 lots offered, only 45 sold, mostly within their estimates. The top bid went to modern Israeli artist Reuven Rubin, at'Les Oliviers' by Reuven Rubin £91,250 for Les Oliviers (pictured right). From there prices dropped to £63,650 for Jerusalem wedding by Huvy, then fell to the £30,000 level, and steadily decreased from that point. "The Israeli market is relatively small in numbers compared to the global market," Benartzi explains. "It is estimated to be $15 million a year, which can be just one artwork sold in Sotheby's in New York; but for us, we are a relatively young country and our market is developing rather slowly."

Sotheby's and Christie's also conduct their annual Israeli art sales abroad in New York, where interest in Israeli artists seems to be growing. "We are now in the position where we have Israeli artists who are participating in international exhibitions, like for example the Venice Biennial. We had two artists, one is Sigalit Landau and the other is Yael Bartana representing Poland, which I think was never heard of, and we are getting a lot of attention from the global art market into Israel," says Benartzi.

Benartzi and Aya Shoham (pictured below right), co-owners of Art Station Gallery, have established ArtFI - the country's first ever Fine Art and Finance Conference. As gallery owners, they realized the need to expand the Israeli market andShiri Benartzi and Aya Shoham further establish the nation's art economy. "What we wanted to do is open this market to new people and explain to them what the art market is comprised of, who are the people working in it, tell them about the financial power of artworks ... We want to be the opening point for new collectors, to be the place for knowledge for people who are already in the market, and for people who work in this industry to learn about new global tendencies, to learn from the most important professionals in the art world." On the event's roster are art market experts such as Sotheby's Saul Ingram, Senior Director, Head of Business Development in Europe; the Mei/Moses Art Index founder, Prof. Michael Moses; and the CEO of Christie's Israel, Roni Gilat-Baharaff.

In general, the Middle Eastern art market has enjoyed a boost in the last few years, with major collectors and philanthropists establishing new art fairs and museums in places like Dubai, and the recent revolutionary uprisings in several countries placing the media spotlight on the region's artists. But can Israeli art be included in this genre, or does it thrive within its own bubble? "We are not part of the Middle East market because we cannot participate in it, of course," explains Benartzi. "We cannot go to Dubai, and including us in the 'Middle East' is something for foreigners more than how we look at ourselves. But because there is a lot of interest in the Middle East, Israel is gaining from this rather larger interest."

Besides the regional tensions, what is it that sets Israeli art apart from its neighbors or from Europe and the United States? "All of the artists working in Israel have a lot of interesting things to say about this place we live in, and if you would look at each and every [Israeli] artist that works internationally, the thing that bothers them comes from their background, this is the subject they are dealing with," says Benartzi. Take for example Biennial artist Yael Bartana: she created a film trilogy, inventing a story about a new political movement calling Polish Jews back to their native Poland; the rhetoric and themes mimic that of the early founders of the Israeli state,Yael Bartana, film still from and the events of the final film use several symbols to reference the murder and funeral of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. "If I would compare art from other conflict areas, it's much more "in-your-face," Benartzi comments. "In Israeli art, you wouldn't see it in the first place, but then when you get in deeper and deeper into the subjects and learn more about the artist, you'd be surprised to learn how much this place impacts their work. So it's not in-your-face, it's much more intelligent."

Still, the art market in Israel has a long way to go to catch up to New York and London, and though the prices are rising, Benartzi is still amazed at the high quality artwork you can acquire at prices much lower than worldwide levels. "We want to raise the interest from Israel and outside of Israel. We want to explain to people the benefits of art, and how important it is for us to have a strong culture and art in order to be a stronger nation ... this is one fundamental of society and the strength of the society. You can see the new Tel Aviv Museum [expansion] and the renovation of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, they have unbelievable international collections at worldwide standards. We have a lot to be proud of, and we've reached a point where its time to say we do have a strong art economy, look what we've done here!" That's the goal of the ArtFI conference, which opens March 21st and kicks off Tel Aviv's Art Weekend. "As opposed to everything that happens in Israel, we still have a very strong spirit and we manage to do something big that does not involve anything other than art and this is the biggest achievement," exclaims Benartzi.

The Art of Video Games

From Going Out Guide (Washington, DC): The Art of Video Games
"The Art of Video Games," a technologically impressive but intellectually inert exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, belongs in a history or technology museum, not in an institution devoted to art. Despite its title, it fails to grapple with questions about the definition and boundaries of art, questions that tend to make people squeamish in a democratic society that would rather everything be art than anyone feel excluded from the realms of sanctified culture.

Which is not to say that the 40-year history of video games hasn't produced supremely sophisticated aesthetic experiences. Or that the virtual worlds summoned by designers of the best of the 80 games on display aren't every bit as "artistic" as the best scenic design for theater or the movies. Or that people can't have emotional reactions to the events within a game, though it is clear that this aspect of gaming is a work in progress rather than a fully achieved goal.

But is it in fact the case, as game designer Jenova Chen says, that "everything is an art"? Or are there important lines that demarcate entertainment and art? Exhibition curator Chris Melissinos hedges in the wall text that introduces the show: "Using the cultural lens of an art museum, viewers can determine whether the games on display are indeed worthy of the title 'art.' "

Very likely, some of these games, and even more in the future, rise to that level. But the exhibition doesn't address what distinguishes merely entertaining games from great ones, and what models designers should pursue if they want to achieve greater artistic substance.

Instead, it focuses on technology, presented as if the overriding force driving most game design is basic verisimilitude. In one display, we see basic actions - running, climbing, flying - depicted from the earliest era of design in the 1980s to the the past decade in which humans and monsters move with an almost cinematic believability. The goal of ever-improved believability is echoed in video clips featuring prominent designers and industry leaders, though several of them also stress a drive toward moral complexity.

The bulk of the exhibition is contained in two rooms, both ordered chronologically. One features five playable games that trace the gaming history from the simple but addictive graphics of the 1980 Pac-Man to the soothing and seamless experience of Chen's 2009 Flower. The other contains consoles that feature video and audio recordings devoted to particular games over five basic periods of video game history, tracing the evolution of graphics from the 1977 Atari Combat, in which players opposed each other with rudimentary, pixelated tanks, to the cinematic interactivity of Nintendo's Wii, Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360. Melissinos says his goal was to include the three "voices" of the medium, the designers, the games themselves and the players or gamers, who were invited to vote online for the games they wanted in the show.

To the extent that aesthetic issues are addressed, it is in the interplay of technology and its limitations with the almost universal ambition of designers to create more fully immersive and realistic-seeming game environments. The exhibition focuses on games created for the home market, for consoles such as the Atari, rather than the more visually complicated experience of the arcade video. And so a subtheme is the compromise and innovation forced upon designers as they downsize arcade games for the more limited graphics of machines that, for many years, used cartridges or tapes.

One obvious question, if you want to nibble around the edges of the broader debate about whether video games are art or not, is the audience's relationship to old and outdated games. No one would suggest that the Masses of the 15th-century composer Josquin des Pres offer an inferior experience to the music of the 19th-century Richard Wagner. But for the bulk of the gaming community, and for many designers presented in this exhibition, game design is about progress, about ever-new and improved products.

There is a good deal of groupthink in evidence throughout the exhibition, which was sponsored in part by the Entertainment Software Association Foundation and is being supported by the Entertainment Consumers Association. Both are nonprofits, and the latter explicitly says it isn't supported by the industry, though it often advocates for policies closely aligned with the interests of gaming manufacturers. A spokeswoman for the museum says all decisions about content were made independently of and after the involvement of the two groups.

But the layout of the exhibition stresses corporate identity rather than artistic or aesthetic themes, and the walls are covered with the trademark TM symbol and familiar brands: Nintendo, Microsoft, Mattel, Sega. The exhibition designers deserve credit for creating a manageable acoustic environment, with each console producing a limited but audible amount of sound. It's a noisy exhibition, but not cacophonous. But it also feels commercial, like a giant Apple store.

Most of the people interviewed for the exhibition stress the same themes. They are largely convinced that video games are a revolutionary moment in culture, that their future lies in narrative and emotional connection, and that the illusion of participation is what distinguishes video games from other arts.

They may all be correct in their understanding, but the exhibition needs to question it more thoroughly. If one examines the history of photography (which struggled to find an aesthetic unique from painting) and film (which worked to define itself against theater), it's not clear that simply aiming at cinematic realism is the best goal for an independent video game art. The fetish for narrative is understandable, given the close connection between gaming and the movie industry. But it's not as if we live in a society that wants for narrative experiences. If anything, we are too much inundated with narrative, from movies, television and the Web, to the point that one author has reasonably asked if we are "amusing ourselves to death."

And while the role of agency - the ability to make decisions and influence outcomes - does indeed distinguish video games from many other art forms, it's not clear that this enhances the form's aesthetic impact. Many of these games leave one with little time to actually look at what the designers have created. The dynamics of play are so absorbing that there's no role for contemplation.

Many art forms are fundamentally resistant to the kind of participation celebrated in the gaming world. The fact that you can't reach into the pages of a novel by Charles Dickens to avert disaster, or assuage the pain in a crucifixion painting from the Renaissance, or save the young courtesan from death in an opera by Verdi is part of the moral and aesthetic project of experiencing them as art. A certain kind of passivity, a submission to the artist's vision, may be essential to art. It's entirely possible that great art disempowers as much as it empowers.

Video games emerged technologically with computers, but they have equally deep roots in escapist entertainments such as science fiction and fantasy role playing (Dungeons and Dragons is cited as inspiration by several designers). The late 1970s and '80s were a time of collective anxiety about America's declining power, the collapse of our industrial economy and the emergence of new cultural and economic forces such as Japan. Video games, like role playing, may well be a compensatory response to broad feelings of impotence, hence their often obsessive focus on the illusion of agency and control over the world.

Fundamentally, there's an argument about consciousness embedded in these games, an argument that hasn't been teased out in this exhibition. In games, the world is often seen down the barrel of a gun, or as if through the window of a human-like machine moving through space. You experience these worlds from a commanding but solitary point of view, and you must actively look for things in order to see them. Actual consciousness is very different, full of distraction and peripheral data, more scattered and impressionistic than anything offered up by video games.

Not all games take the idea of control to the hyperbolic extremes of the shoot'em-up and action and adventure genera. The player is definitely steering the experience in Flower, but it's a meandering sort of power. Nor are all games relentlessly focused on narrative, and some, such as Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2, revel in a visually pleasing abstraction.

But the exhibition does little to underscore what is aesthetically novel about the best games on display, opting instead for inclusiveness and a broad history of their evolution. And there is virtually nothing about the visual precedents for game design, the longer history of art that must surely be lurking in the consciousness of the best game designers. Nor are classic controversies addressed, such as racism in games including Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, or the purported and widely disputed connection between violent games and violent behavior, a perennial sideshow for opportunistic politicians but still an unsettled sociological question. If the exhibition had been less focused on including large numbers of games, and thus broad publicity for the major game companies, it might have given greater focus to the more positive trends in the industry, the greater role of women in game design, and the increased popularity of games that don't involve combat of any sort.

At the very least, one would like an exhibition that makes critical distinctions, that tells us which games are better than others, and why. What must a game do to become art? And when will the medium itself begin to look more like the art world than the entertainment industry?

I'd propose some of the following: We'll know it's art when old games are as interesting to people as new ones; when particular games play a role in changing the actual world, just as novels such as "The Sorrows of Young Werther," "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and "The Jungle" altered ideas of identity and politics; when the best games are richly self-referential to an accepted canon of classic games; and when the contemplation after playing a game is more pleasing than the game itself. They may well be art, and some games may already meet some or all of those criteria - which are by no means definitive of all art.

The problem with "Video Games as Art" isn't that it can't answer these basic questions, it's that it doesn't ask them.

Nazi-seized art ordered returned to American man

From Boston.com: Nazi-seized art ordered returned to American man
BERLIN—Germany's top federal appeals court ruled Friday that a Berlin museum must return to a Jewish man from the U.S. thousands of rare posters that were seized from his father by the Gestapo, saying that for the institution to keep them would be perpetuating the crimes of the Nazis.

The Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe said Peter Sachs, 74, was the rightful owner of the posters collected by his father Hans Sachs, now believed to be worth between euro4.5 million and euro16 million ($6 million and $21 million), and can demand their return from the German Historical Museum.

The ruling brings to an end some seven years of legal battles to have the vast collection of posters that date back to the late 19th century returned.

"I can't describe what this means to me on a personal level," Peter Sachs, who recently moved to Nevada from Sarasota, Florida, told The Associated Press in an e-mailed statement after the ruling. "It feels like vindication for my father, a final recognition of the life he lost and never got back."

The case ended up with Karlsruhe court because of the posters' unique and tumultuous journey through more than 70 years of German history, in which they were stolen from Sachs by the Nazis' Gestapo, moved on to the possession of communist East Germany, then to the Berlin museum after reunification.

The court acknowledged that Peter Sachs did not file for restitution of the posters by the official deadline for such claims, and that the postwar restitution regulations instituted by the Western Allies could not be specifically applied in his case. But the judges ruled that the spirit of the laws was clearly on Sachs' side.

Not to return the posters "would perpetuate Nazi injustice," the judges wrote. "This cannot be reconciled with the purpose of the Allied restitution provisions, which were to protect the rights of the victims."

Hagen Philipp Wolf, a spokesman for Germany's cultural affairs office which oversees the public German Historical Museum, said the decision would be respected.

"The Federal Court of Justice has decided, we have a clear ruling, the German Historical Museum must return the Sachs posters," he said.

A total of 4,259 posters have been so-far identified as having belonged to Sachs' father. They were among a collection of 12,500 that his father owned, which include advertisements for exhibitions, cabarets, movies and consumer products, as well as political propaganda -- all rare, with only small original print runs. It is not clear what happened to the remainder.

The German Historical Museum rarely had more than a handful of the posters on display at any given time, though it had said the collection was an invaluable resource for researchers.

Sachs' attorney in Germany, Matthias Druba, said that his client now hopes that he can find a new home for the collection where they can be displayed to a wider public.

"Hans Sachs wanted to show the poster art to the public, so the objective now is to find a depository for the posters in museums where they can really be seen and not hidden away," Druba told the AP.

The posters were seized from Hans Sachs' home in 1938 on the orders of Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, who wanted them for a museum of his own.

Born in 1881, Hans Sachs was a dentist who began collecting posters while in high school. By 1905, he was Germany's leading private poster collector and later launched the art publication Das Plakat, or The Poster.

After the seizure of the posters in the summer, Hans Sachs was arrested during the Nov. 9, 1938, pogrom against the Jews, known as Kristallnacht, or Night of Broken Glass, and thrown in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp north of Berlin.

When he was released about two weeks later, the family did not wait to see what would happen next and fled to the United States.

After the war, Hans Sachs assumed the collection had been destroyed and accepted compensation of about 225,000 German marks (then worth about $50,000) from West Germany in 1961.

He learned five years later, however, that part of the collection had survived the war and been turned over to an East Berlin museum. He wrote the communist authorities about seeing the posters or even bringing an exhibit to the West to no avail. He died in 1974 without ever seeing them again.

The posters became part of the German Historical Museum's collection in 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Peter Sachs has said he only learned of the existence of the collection in 2005, and began fighting then for the return of the posters.

When he receives the posters back Sachs will repay the compensation that his father received, Druba said. He said it was not yet clear what the amount would be in current terms, but that it could be in the "seven-figures."

Pigment colors: Alizarin crimson

From Wikipedia:
Alizarin or 1,2-dihydroxyanthraquinone (also known as Mordant Red 11 and Turkey Red) is an organic compound with formula C14H8O4 that has been used throughout history as a prominent dye, originally derived from the roots of plants of the madder genus.

Alizarin was used as a red dye for the English parliamentary New Model Army. The distinctive red color would continue to be worn for centuries (though also produced by other dyes such as cochineal), giving English and later British soldiers the nickname of "redcoat". In 1869, it became the first natural pigment to be duplicated synthetically.

Alizarin is the main ingredient for the manufacture of the madder lake pigments known to painters as Rose madder and Alizarin crimson. The term is also part of the name for a variety of related dyes, such as Alizarine Cyanine Green G and Alizarine Brilliant Blue R, and gave its name to alizarin crimson, a particular shade of red. The word derives from the Arabic al-usara "juice".

Occurrence
Alizarin occurs in the root of the common madder (Rubia tinctorum) and in various parts of Indian madder (Rubia cordifolia).

History
Madder has been cultivated as a dyestuff since antiquity in central Asia and Egypt, where it was grown as early as 1500 BC. Cloth dyed with madder root pigment was found in the tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun and in the ruins of Pompeii and ancient Corinth. In the Middle Ages, Charlemagne encouraged madder cultivation. It grew well in the sandy soils of the Netherlands and became an important part of the local economy.

By 1804, the English dye maker George Field had refined the technique to lake madder by treating it with alum, and an alkali, that converts the water-soluble madder extract into a solid, insoluble pigment. This resulting madder lake has a longer-lasting color, and can be used more efficaciously, for example by blending it into a paint. Over the following years, it was found that other metal salts, including those containing iron, tin, and chromium, could be used in place of alum to give madder-based pigments of various other colors. This general method of preparing lakes has been known for centuries.

In 1826, the French chemist Pierre-Jean Robiquet found that madder root contained two colorants, the red alizarin and the more rapidly fading purpurin. The alizarin component became the first natural dye to be synthetically duplicated in 1868 when the German chemists Carl Graebe and Carl Liebermann, working for BASF, found a way to produce it from anthracene. About the same time, the English dye chemist William Henry Perkin independently discovered the same synthesis, although the BASF group filed their patent before Perkin by only one day. The subsequent discovery (made by Broenner and Gutzhow in 1871) that anthracene could be abstracted from coal tar further advanced the importance and affordability of alizarin's artificial synthesis.

The synthetic alizarin could be produced for a fraction of the cost of the natural product, and the market for madder collapsed virtually overnight. The principal synthesis entailed oxidation of anthraquinone-2-sulfonic acid with sodium nitrate in concentrated sodium hydroxide. Alizarin itself has been in turn Structure and properties
Alizarin is one of ten dihydroxyanthraquinone isomers. Its molecular structure can be viewed as being derived from anthraquinone by replacement of two neighboring hydrogen atoms (H) by hydroxyl groups (-OH).

It is soluble in hexane and chloroform, and can be obtained from the latter as red-purple crystals, m.p. 277–278 °C.

Alizarin changes color depending on the pH of the solution it is in, thereby making it a pH indicator.

Applications
Alizarin Red is used in a biochemical assay to determine, quantitatively by colorimetry, the presence of calcific deposition by cells of an osteogenic lineage. As such it is an early stage marker (days 10–16 of in vitro culture) of matrix mineralization, a crucial step towards the formation of calcified extracellular matrix associated with true bone.

Alizarin's abilities as a biological stain were first noted in 1567, when it was observed that when fed to animals, it stained their teeth and bones red. The chemical is now commonly used in medical studies involving calcium. Free (ionic) calcium forms precipitates with alizarin, and tissue block containing calcium stain red immediately when immersed in alizarin. Thus, both pure calcium and calcium in bones and other tissues can be stained. The process of staining calcium with alizarin works best when conducted in basic solution.

In clinical practice, it is used to stain synovial fluid to assess for basic calcium phosphate crystals. Alizarin has also been used in studies involving bone growth, osteoporosis, bone marrow, calcium deposits in the vascular system, cellular signaling, gene expression, tissue engineering, and mesenchymal stem cells.

In geology, it is used as a stain to indicate the calcium carbonate minerals, calcite and aragonite

Wednesday!

I know I keep promising that I'm going to get back to a daily schedule of posts, and I know that weeks have gone by and there's been nothing regular about my schedule!

And I apologize! Stuff happens, abetted, I admit, by procrastination. There was a helluva lot of scanning of material I needed to do which I never did, and now I've got to get all that material back where it came from, so I've got 2 days of probably 12 hours a day spending my time scanning, and double checking to make sure I havne't missed any pages, etc.

So I'm going to spend the next 2 days doing that, will be all caught up on Wednesday, and will resume daily posts here.

And will finally have learned my lesson about procrastination - don't do it!