AMERICA’S COLORMEN: BOCOUR, LEVISON, GAMBLIN, AND GOLDEN Joyce Hill Stoner ABSTRACT Four paint manufacturers have figured prominently in the world of contemporary art conservation in the U.S.: Leonard Bocour (1910-1993), Henry Levison (1906-1988), Robert Gamblin (b. 1948), and Mark Golden (b. 1954). The Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation (FAIC) has transcripts of interviews with all four men and additional transcripts from allied professionals: René de la Rie, conservation scientist, artists Mark Gottsegen and Joy Turner Luke of the American Society for Testing Materials International (ASTM), Monona Rossol of Arts, Crafts, Theatre Safety (ACTS), and Zora Pinney, who supplied paints to California artists for more than thirty years. 1 The Bocour, Liquitex, Gamblin, and Golden companies have manufactured paints used by both artists and conservators. Conservators were at first the incidental consumers of products created by Bocour and Levison, but eventually became target customers for side products made by Gamblin and Golden. IMPACT OF THE PAINT MEDIUM ON THE ARTIST The binding media introduced into the paints created by colormen had and continue to have impact on the techniques of both artists and conservators. In a variation of McLuhanism we can say that the medium may be at least part of the message. Andrew Wyeth directly addressed the differences between his traditional media of tempera vs. the oil used by his artist father N.C. Wyeth and his artist son Jamie Wyeth: Oil is hot and fiery, almost like a summer night, where tempera is a cool breeze, dry, crackling like winter branches blowing in the wind. There’s no fight in oil. It doesn’t have the austere in it. The difference is like the difference between Beethoven and Bach [1]. Moving away from traditional media such as oil and tempera, other artists in the mid- twentieth century began experimenting with industrial materials, acrylic resins, and acrylic emulsion paints. Janet Lee Ann Marontate’s 1996 thesis for the University of Montreal on “Synthetic Media and Modern Painting: A Case Study in the Sociology of Innovation”, 2 and Jo Crook and Tom Learner’s 2000 book The Impact of Modern Paints reported 20 th -century artists’ perceptions of synthetic paint media, including: Morris Louis (1912-1962), known as the first artist to use Bocour’s Magna acrylic resin paints, produced a series called Veils in 1954 all done with poured and spilled diluted Magna. Louis told Leonard Bocour “part of my thesis is that materials influence form” [2]. Kenneth Noland (b. 1924) noted, ”Oil paint would always leave a slick of oil, around the edge of the color, whereas acrylic paint stops at its own edge . . . Color field painting came in at 1 FAIC Oral History File, housed in the Winterthur Museum Library and Archives: Leonard Bocour (1978—a copy of the interview from the Archives of American Art carried out by Paul Cummings); Henry Levison (1986, carried out by Albert Marshall) Robert Gamblin (2002), Joy Turner Luke (2002), René de la Rie (2003), Mark Golden (2003), Mark Gottsegen (2003), Zora Pinney (2003), and Monona Rossol (2003). Unless otherwise noted, interviews carried out by Joyce Hill Stoner. 2 In an e-mail of 5 August 2003, Marontate noted that she may be revising and publishing the thesis as a book in the near future.