So little, so much and blue
Jurriaan, Germany, and the color Blue
My friend Jurriaan Molenaar is currently teaching with Michel Melenhorst a seminar about the color blue at the University of Applied Sciences Detmold. Above are some of the results from this week’s work.
I love this idea, a seminar about the color blue. I love the reductionist choice of that specific color.
Distilled to only one element, so much can potentially emerge. A lot has been said too about the color blue. Some notable artists in history had blue periods. The one I admire the most, whose work speaks to me tremendously, is Yves Klein. His unique relationship with space, the air, the void, and the immaterial speaks to my heart in the most profound ways.
Yves Klein’s Blue
He created a blue color that he patented and worked with in so many ways: the International Klein Blue, or IKB as it is known. He said: “Blue has no dimensions, it is beyond dimensions.” In his search for the immaterial, this is the color he chose. He also said: “I had left the visible, physical blue at the door, outside, in the street. The real blue was inside, the blue of the profundity of space… The immaterialization of blue, the colored space that can not be seen but which we impregnate ourselves with” – Selected writings 1928-1962.
I love the notion of impregnating ourselves with Blue. The abstract, limitless color of the sky and the sea. The vastness of it. Think about the space that we are impregnated with blue; you become limitless.
Everything is possible; imagination is the key
Like Yves Klein, you start believing that everything is possible, way beyond what is.
“The imagination is the vehicle of sensibility. Transported by the imagination, we attain life, life itself, which is absolute art.” – Towards the immaterial, Editions Dilecta (2006).
Yves Klein died young at the age of 34 of a heart attack, yet his legacy changed how we conceive art and, thus, the world.
So how is blue for you? If you like it why don’t you comment or share this post?
One Comment
Alexander Stolze
Oh blue , for sure, is the most exciting color. as for centuries it
was nearly impossible to get it or produce it, only modern times made it available as a color for everyone's use. It was and might still be a mystical color . Maybe because of its existence as מים ושמים?