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Moods of Poe in words and colors — Ruth Scott Blackson’s Hidden City Festival installation at the Athenaeum


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—>Sam visits the Athenaeum for an encounter with Edgar Allen Poe’s moody words in a Hidden City Festival project. — the Artblog editors—————>

A visit to Through the Pale DoorRuth Scott Blackson’s installation inside the historic Philadelphia Athenaeum, begins with a guide leading you to the private library’s third-floor reading room. There, you will find Blackson’s creation: a trilogy of artists books, printed at the local Second State Press, each modeled on the colors in individual rooms in Edgar Allan Poe’s 1840s home on Seventh and Spring Garden streets. Page by page, each book pulls color swatches from the Poe house, matched with writings by the inimitable author-poet that reference those same hues. Each swatch is a shade that perfectly matches the emotions evoked by Poe’s words, whether it be a feeling of dread or one reminiscent of Poe’s delightful gallows humor.

The artist’s book crafted by Ruth Scott Blackson (left) contains lines from the works of Edgar Allan Poe, matched up with the colors believed to have covered the walls of his Philadelphia home, and decoded using the Munsell Book of Color (right)
The artist’s book crafted by Ruth Scott Blackson (left) contains lines from the works of Edgar Allan Poe, matched up with the colors believed to have covered the walls of his Philadelphia home, and decoded using the Munsell Book of Color (right)

One important rule I’ve learned from experiencing a number of Hidden City Festival projects around the city: do not plan on darting from site to site and expect to get meaningful satisfaction out of them. That’s especially true at Through the Pale Door.

An open page from one of Blackson’s artist’s books.
An open page from one of Blackson’s artist’s books.

Shades of brown and yellow match words about death and brown stout

In one artist’s book, “A Cadaverous Hue,” a quote from Poe’s 1845 short story, “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,” is printed beside a sickly yellow swatch. On another page, the line “It is possible, however, that, but for the Brown Stout, I might have been a little nervous,” from “Some Words with a Mummy,” is printed with a humorously hearty shade of brown. Perusing each artist’s book becomes a visually rich experience similar to that of reading a Poe story, through brief snippets of his words and the haunting beauty of Blackson’s colors. For, as the master of the macabre wrote in “The Black Cat,” Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.”

This image shows the obscure color codes from the Munsell system that Blackson studied to create her artist’s book.
This image shows the obscure color codes from the Munsell system that Blackson studied to create her artist’s book.

History of the project – Poe’s signature, his house, lost wall colors and a color guide book

Blackson’s installation was inspired firstly by the fact that Poe’s signature was recorded in the Athenaeum’s visitor log on November 19, 1838. The next step was finding the “Comparative Microscopic Paint and Color Analysis” report by one Frank Welsh in the Athenaeum’s collection, made in 1984 for the National Park Service. The report details the original colors from Poe’s Philadelphia home, based on the few remaining flecks of paint on the walls.

Poe’s home was converted into a museum by Richard Gimbel, who bought the house in 1933 and stripped the walls of the original colors that likely inspired or at least affected Poe while he lived in Philadelphia. Welsh’s report describes colors in written notations based on the Munsell color system. This system, devised by Albert Munsell around the turn of the century, defines all colors in the rainbow based on three of their attributes— hue, value and chroma. The complexities of color theory can’t possibly be explained within this review, but suffice it to say that recreating colors from their Munsell system descriptions is no small feat.

An atlas of the Munsell Color system, as depicted in “The Color Revolution” by Regina Lee Blaszczyk, which is available to visitors of the exhibit.
An atlas of the Munsell Color system, as depicted in “The Color Revolution” by Regina Lee Blaszczyk, which is available to visitors of the exhibit.

With all this material to consider, a visitor to “Through the Pale Door” begins by flipping through Blackson’s artist’s books, and ends by studying the intricacies of color theory systems. Blackson has generously provided a wealth of reading material — a selection of books on Poe, color theory and the significance of authors’ homes, all handily bookmarked to point guests in the direction of their most significant passages.

Expecting a brief visit, I wound up hunched in the corner, feverishly pulling books and flipping through them in a desperate search for a clarifying vein of commonality. In the words of the master, “I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”

Artist Ruth Scott Blackson, left, and Edgar Allan Poe
Artist Ruth Scott Blackson, left, and Edgar Allan Poe
The entire third-story reading hall at the Athenaeum is open for visitors to spread out while examining Blackson’s well curated selection of reading materials.
The entire third-story reading hall at the Athenaeum is open for visitors to spread out while examining Blackson’s well curated selection of reading materials.

Despite the wide array of disparate elements present in this piece, something in it clicks. Blackson has stepped “through the pale door” in time, as it were, to imagine the black-and-white past of Poe’s life in vivid color. We are invited by Blackson’s artist’s books to imagine not only the colors of the interior of Poe’s home, but also, in a distinctly Poe-esque, Gothic sense, the inside of his mind.

Blackson’s clear affection for investigating arcane documents and finding hidden treasures is evident. She not only took on the cumbersome task of decoding the Munsell system, but also artfully arranged the exhibition to invite visitors on the same path of intellectual exploration.

Ruth Scott Blackson’s series of artist’s books (seen on table) are on display to the public as part of “Through the Pale Door” at the Athenaeum.
Ruth Scott Blackson’s series of artist’s books (seen on table) are on display to the public as part of Through the Pale Door at the Athenaeum.

Perhaps the visitor’s journey is the meaning of  Through the Pale Door – the experience of you, the lay person, gaining new knowledge about Poe and color theory, and perhaps developing a desire to seek out what other ghosts the Athenaeum’s collection may have to offer.

Poe’s description from the poem “Dream-land,” an ode to dreams, seems applicable : There the traveller meets aghast/ Sheeted Memories of the Past.”

Through the Pale Door is open Thursday-Sunday, 12 to 7 p.m., through June 30, as are all Hidden City Philadelphia sites.

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