NUANCIER

Pierre David created this color chart while in residence at the Museum of Modern Art in Salvador da Bahia, in Brazil. The skin pigmentation on the backs of forty employees of MAM was photographed and listed to give rise to a classification of flesh tones. In an artist’s book refering to a color chart, the colors appear in a gradation, either in the succession or in the simultaneity of the spread fan. The other side of the book reveals the portraits of these men divided up according to the same chromatic progress as the skins details, from lightest to darkest. The shades are codified and produced industrially by the Dutch paint manufacturer Sikkens/Akzo Nobel.