Arts, cultural heritage, sciences, and micro-/bio-/technology: Impact of biomaterials and biocolorants from antiquity till today!

Abstract

Nature has inspired and provided humans with ideas, concepts, and thoughts on design, art, and performance for millennia. From early societies when humankind often took shelter in caves, until today, many materials and colorants to express feelings or communicate with one another were derived from plants, animals, or microbes. In this manuscript, an overview of these natural products used in the creation of art is given, from paintings on rocks to fashionable dresses made from bacterial cellulose. Besides offering many examples of art works, the origin and application of various biomaterials and colorants are discussed. While many facets of our daily lives have changed over millennia, one certainty has been that humans have an intrinsic need to conceptualize and create to express themselves. Driven by technological advances in the past decades and in the light of global warming, new and often more sustainable materials and colorants have been discovered and implemented. The impact of art on human societies remains relevant and powerful.

One-sentence summary: This manuscript discusses the use of biomaterials and biocolorants in art from a historical perspective, spanning 37,000 bc until today.

Keywords: Art; Biocolorants; Biomaterials; Natural Products.

Graphical Abstract

Fig. 1.

Drawings made by early humans in caves and on rock walls. From left to right: Aboriginal rock art discovered in the Gabarnmung rock site (±28,000 bc), and rock art uncovered in the Chauvet (±37,000 bc) and Lascaux caves (±18,000 bc) in France.

Fig. 2.

Left: A dress made of bacterial cellulose. Right: Bacterial cellulose fabric.

Fig. 3.

Eastern silk art tapestry and spun silk yarn (left) produced by the mulberry silkworm (top right). The silk fibroin fiber consists of a serial condensation of amino acids (bottom right).

Fig. 4.

Colorful Andes artwork made with feathers and wool.

Fig. 5.

Belgian artwork made with or from animals. On the left, pig ham wrapped around the pillars of the UGent Aula building by Jan Fabre. On the top right, a beetle-covered ceiling in the Royal Palace in Brussels (Jan Fabre). On the bottom right, tattoed, living pigs by Wim Delvoye and “Beaufort-Art,” molluscs and shellfish growing on metal constructions in the tidal zone of the North Sea.

Fig. 6.

From left to right, bacterial cellulose used as bio-fiber in clothing, kombucha tea cellulose film, and a mycelium-based chair 3D-printed by Dutch designer Eric Klarenbeek.

Fig. 7.

Egyptian use of biocolorants to decorate sarcophagi and statues (left) through the use of minerals and biopigments extracted from for example Indigofera tinctoria to obtain indigo dye (right).

Fig. 8.

Chemical structure of indigotin, also known as “jeans blue.”

Fig. 9.

Chemical structure of anthocyanins delphinidin (R₁= OH, R₂ = OH), petunidin (R₁ = OCH₃, R₂ = OH), and malvidin (R₁ = OCH₃, R₂ = OCH₃).

Fig. 10.

Chemical structure of various carotenoids.

Fig. 11.

Chemical structure of riboflavin, often used as a yellow biocolorant.

Fig. 12.

Chemical structures of the red biocolorants brazilin, alizarin, and shikonin (from left to right).

Fig. 13.

Top: Chemical structures of the red biocolorants kermes acid and carmine acid. Bottom: Harvesting of scale insects to obtain these red biocolorants.

Fig. 14.

Chemical structure of monascin.

Fig. 15.

Renaissance painters Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Floris Claesz. Van Dyck depicting microbial activity (cheese, bread, and wine). Left: “The Peasant Weddings.” Right: “Still Life with Cheeses.”

Fig. 16.

Left: Microbial art made by Sir Alexander Fleming. Right: Sir Alexander Fleming behind his desk creating agar art, the first place winning agar piece of the agar art competition of 2018 organized by the American Society of Microbiology, and on the bottom the “cloaca artwork” created by Wim Delvoye.