Pigment Palaver: YInMn Blue

Way back in the first post in this series, I mentioned I was inspired to start it by the discovery of YInMn Blue, or Oregon Blue. It actually wasn't commercially available yet back in 2019, but it's finally been cleared for consumer use and went on sale just recently. This site is selling it as part of the Matisse line of acrylics by Australian company Derivan, which incidentally is the brand I've gotten most of my paint from. (Though Derivan's own website, oddly, isn't listing it yet.) YInMn Blue is notable as the first new inorganic blue pigment discovered in quite some time (I've seen conflicting reports on what the most recent previous inorganic blue pigment—Prussian Blue or Manganese Blue—is, but it seems like it's been at least a hundred years since the last one was discovered.)

You might notice, if you followed the link, that this is a very expensive paint. It's currently going for $179.40 for a 40 ml tube, or $4.49/ml. Given that the company is located in Maine, I'm assuming that's in US dollars, so at the time of writing that'd be $5.87/ml AUD. Normally the Matisse Structure Formula line comes in 75 ml tubes in seven tiers of pricing ranging from $10.75 to $38.95, so that's $0.14 to $0.52 per milliliter. Yes, this paint is more than ten times more expensive than standard paint pricing.

To understand why, we have to turn to the name. The name YInMn Blue comes from the chemical formula of the pigment in this paint: yttrium-indium-manganese oxide. (It's also called Oregon Blue, since it was discovered at Oregon State University in 2009.) From what I've read, indium is the main factor in the cost, being a rather rare element (comparable to silver), though the production of the pigment might also be a factor, as it requires heating the oxides of the three elements together at about 1,200 °C (2,200 °F). (Manganese is quite common, and while yttrium is of perhaps middling rarity it's still more common than indium.)

While the prohibitive cost of YInMn Blue means I regrettably won't be able to get my hands on any to try it out any time soon, it's interesting to reflect on the historic costs of painting. While even the costs I noted above will add up over time, we're currently living in the best time ever for pigment costs. Modern chemistry has rendered pigment-making easier and cheaper than ever before in history. As an example, the pigment ultramarine used to be made of crushed-up lapis-lazuli, mined in Afghanistan and imported to Europe. Because of the labor involved, it literally cost more than its weight in gold in the Middle Ages. (Which is why it gets used so sparingly in famous Renaissance paintings!) The gold price listed for today in AUD is $77.77 per gram; multiply by gold's density of 19.3 g/ml to get a cost of $1,500.96/ml. By that metric, YInMn Blue paint is still 256 times less expensive than gold by volume. Unfortunately I don't know the density of YInMn Blue pigment so I can't compare them by weight (which would make the most sense), so comparing by volume, which is how paint is sold, will have to do.

Oh, and the ultramarine that used to be so expensive? We can now produce the relevant molecule synthetically, and Derivan has it listed as a Series 2 (i.e., second-cheapest) paint at $12.95 a tube, or $0.17/ml. That's almost 8830 times cheaper than gold, showing just how much we artists have to be thankful about in this day and age. (I quite like ultramarine and have used it in several paintings, so I'll probably do a post on it at some point.) Anyway, that's enough for now, and maybe in a few years the price for YInMn Blue will come down too (due to improvements in the manufacturing process or economies of scale) and I'll be able to actually try some. Who knows? A hui hou!