Heavenly blue

    Watch, if you can, the excellent Dr. James Fox's new series A History of Art in Three Colours, especially last night's episode on blue.

    The most beguiling colour for artists, the Ancient Greeks didn't even have a word for blue, but with the painstaking transformation of Afghan lapis into ultramarine pigment in Venice (the colour's "spiritual home") in the 14th. century, and its use by painters such as Giotto and Titian, blue came into its own.

    The action then moves to 18th. century Germany and the Romantic movement, specifically to Novalis and his novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen which contains 'the blue flower', the symbol of the movement (see Penelope Fitzgerald's The Blue Flower - there's a very short post on it here), a story which transformed the meaning of the colour.

 

    Glossing over Picasso's blue period - his blues were dour and depressed and contained, not uplifting and 'infinite' - blue again becomes the focus of art through the work of Yves Klein whose paintings were of and about blue and who, with paint maker Edouard Adam, created the colour International Klein Blue (see left).

 

     It is a more modern artistic medium which gives blue a further meaning, as the photographic shots of the earth - Earthrise - taken in 1968 by the crew of Apollo 8 while in orbit round the Moon show that from representing the infinite and inspiration, desire, love and the unreachable, blue is now the colour of home.

Comments

[Ruth M.]

Oh Cornflower you've outdone yourself. Such lyrical writing, sweeping color into my workday lunch. Wish I could see the series. And how about color for the ears ... Mood Indigo, Blue Moon, Blue Christmas, Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue

[Cornflower]

Ruth, you can see a two-minute clip from the programme on Youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytCngvyPSt8
Colour for the ears is good, too!

[Nancy]

Thanks for the YouTube link - wish I could have seen the program - and on my favorite color!

[lila]

I too enjoyed the YouTube link! [I can't get the BBC programs on my computer here in Arkansas, USA!]
Lapis has been one of my favorite stones, so truly blue!
Thank-you for this post, I'm off to follow more of the links you have for us!

[rj]

That sounds heavenly. I'm in the USA, so I hope my local PBS station picks up the series (sweeps week is normally stuffed with programming from BBC, and maybe I can send them some broad programming hints), or that I can pick it up in video later.

[Dark Puss]

I enjoyed this programme, but I think one should not "gloss over" the use of blue by Picasso who used it with great expertise indeed. I am much more impressed by his work with blue than that of Klein. My memory may well be faulty, but I was a little surprised not to see any discussion of the paintings of the Fauves who made interesting, striking and imaginative use of blue (ultramarine I think) in their works.

[Cornflower]

I chose to skip over Picasso simply because his blue is not mine. I don't see it as a colour of dark moods at all - for me it's a very spiritual colour, uplifting, rich, much more to do with inspiration and things positive ...
As to the Fauves, I can't really comment other than to say that I suppose the programme didn't have room for everything and perhaps their use of blue didn't 'progress' the colour and the way it was seen as much as that of the artists featured.