The History of Art in Three Colours BBC
Televised 02.08.2012
I've purposely kept this TV programme until the Colour part of the course and I'm so pleased I did because it meant so much more than if I had done it earlier.
The programme gave a very interesting resume of the colour blue including the search for the perfect blue and the way it's elusiveness has influenced artists.
Blue has always been a tantalising, elusive colour. Both the sea and the sky are blue but neither can be captured and held. In European art blue was totally absent until the Persians came from the east carrying lapis lazuli. After a painstaking process of grinding the stone and mixing it with noxious chemicals ultra marine was produced.
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| Lapis lazuli willowslavender.com |
Very soon the illuminated manuscripts of the time were taking full advantage of this new and wonderful colour. Giotto used blue in the frescoes in Scrovegni Chapel. He even painted the vaulted ceiling entirely blue with stars; the analogy being that blue was heavenly.
The Church restricted the supply of lapis lazuli and it became a more precious commodity than gold. People were forbidden to wear it and in art it was only permitted to be used on the Virgin Mary.
As a young man Titian who was born about 1490 went to Venice because it was the capital of the art world. In Venice all colours were available and Titian was a colour addict. He painted Bacchus and Ariadne in really vibrant colours and is credited with liberating blue from the dominance of the Church.
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| Bacchus and Ariadne 1520-23 Titian nationalgallery.org.uk |
Blue became the colour that represented our deepest fears. Today if we are sad we sometimes say we are "blue".
Picasso
Picasso had his "blue period" and made pictures that were the epitome of despair. Picasso and his friend Casagemus travelled from their native Spain to Paris at the time of the Universal Exhibition. Paris was buzzing and the young men, even though they were very poor immersed themselves in all it had to offer. Casagemus shot himself in the head when he mistakenly thought he had shot his girlfriend and Picasso struggled for a long time to come to terms with what had happened. He took on Casagemus identity and painted him constantly.
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| Death of Casagemus 1901 Picasso picasso-paintings.org |
Karl Jung one of the eminent psychoanalysts of the time was very interested in Picasso's paintings and considered he was watching a decent into schizophrenia. By 1905 Picasso emerged from this period.
Yves Klein
Yves Klein (1928-1962) is credited with being an important figure in post war art. It became his aim to find a new blue; one that was uncontaminated with the colour of the oil the pigment was mixed with. He went to Paris and with Edouard Adam the most authoritative figure in the paint mixing world developed "international blue" where the mixing oil was clear and called "the medium".
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| International blue |
Klein died tragically young of a series of massive heart attacks. He was only 32.
The programme ended not with a painting but with a photograph taken from space in 1968 by Bill Anders. After the long search for the perfect blue it was amazing to people to discover from this new vantage point that the earth itself was blue
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| Taken from space 1968 airspacemag.com |
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