ABSTRACT
Congelation is a name for the act of fixing or congealing, both in painting and in alchemy. Whatever else painting is, it is the patient supervision of oil as it dries, and that is why painters have always been so concerned about how different media dry: whether poppyseed oil dries better than linseed oil, whether pine oils or sunflower oils might be used instead. Distillation is what made romantic painting so effective as a servant of the sublime, and it is the dying idea that keeps the play of postmodernism going. Sublimation is a kind of distillation of solids: a rock, placed on a heating plate, may give off a vapor without melting, and the vapor can be collected where it rises to the top of the vessel. The Greeks knew this method, which they used to tint jewelry, and they named the vessel with two platforms (one high, one low) the kerotakis.
