This fall SAM's Saturday University Lecture Series is taking place online for free and focusing on Color in Asian Art: Material and Meaning. The season kicked off with an entry point into attitudes toward color presented by Jennifer Stager of Johns Hopkins University.

This talk considers the red pigment identified as cinnabar or dragon’s blood in the ancient Mediterranean. The Roman historian Pliny the Elder attributes this pigment (derived from Socotra tree resin) to the blood of actual dragons living on the Indian subcontinent. His critique of painters for their indulgence and excess in using it—and the persistent idea that colors contaminate—stands against an idealized whiteness constructed in opposition to the materials and geopolitics of other cultures. Prof. Stager examines the afterlives of Pliny’s fantastical slander.

The Gardner Center for Asian Art and Ideas presents themed in-depth talks as part of the Saturday University Lecture Series seasonally throughout the year. Enjoy a spectrum of talks on colors produced from the earth, sea, fire, plants, and insects from the Color in Asian Art: Material and Meaning Series on Facebook (facebook.com/seattleartmuseum/live) and learn more about upcoming Saturday University Lectures on our website: visitsam.org/gardnercenter.

About the Presenter

Jennifer Stager is Associate Professor of Art History, Johns Hopkins University. She specializes in the art and architecture of the ancient Mediterranean and its afterlives. Her areas of focus include theories of color and materiality, feminisms, multilinguality, and cultural exchange, and ancient Greek and Roman medicine.

Stager’s first book, Seeing Ancient Mediterranean Color (in progress), recovers period ideas of color as a phenomenon in ancient Mediterranean art. Stager analyzes the material colors found in dyes, pigments, stones, resins, and metals across the wider Mediterranean. An essay based on this work is “The Unbearable Whiteness of Whiteness”