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One of my favourite series in art is Yves Klein's blue work. For anyone unfamiliar, he found a blue that he considered the bluest possible blue [1], and went on

One of my favourite series in art is Yves Klein's blue work. For anyone unfamiliar, he found a blue that he considered the bluest possible blue [1], and went on a journey painting everything in that blue. I loved that he did this, and then eventually managed to get to an exhibition of his work at the Tate Modern and was absolutely blown away by it - it really needs to be seen in the flesh to appreciate it. There's something about his blue, that when painted on to a sculpture, almost makes the 3D disappear and the sculpture looks 2 dimensional. Extremely beautiful. As a side note, some (many?) cultures around the world have no word for blue, blue is just other shades of green. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Klein_Blue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Klein_Blue

pier25 5y ago
Great anecdote! Reminded me of the short story Zima Blue by Alastair Reynolds (which was adapted into an animation short on Netlifx's "Love, Death and Robots").
- thom 5y ago
  I found that episode very moving. It captured the feeling I suspect many of us experience, of having started out with simple, blissful naivety, before slowly accreting layers of grown up, professional bullshit until a craft loses its joy. The desire to strip it all away, not just the ways in which your work has changed over the years but also the ways in which it has changed you. I had no idea Alastair Reynolds was behind the story, I’ve enjoyed his work quite separately.
  - the_af 5y ago
    Apparently more than one "Love, Death + Robots" episode was based on Alastair Reynolds' work. "Beyond the Aquila Rift", for example. I also spotted references to other scifi authors. There's one episode from the first season that is almost 100% something Bradbury would have written (without me telling you which one, can you guess which episode I'm thinking of? Just to doublecheck my own perception), and of course "Pop Squad" from the second season is based on the short story of the same title by Paolo Bacigalupi (from "Pump Six and Other Stories"). And I'm sure I'm missing many more!
    - domdib 5y ago
      John Scalzi authored at least one episode in the first season, and I think another in the second.
selestify 5y ago
As someone who hasn't seen it in the flesh yet, and doesn't "get" modern art unless someone explicitly spells it out for me, could you elaborate more on why it's so spectacular? For example, Blue Monochrome [1] seems to my uneducated eye to be just a layer of pure blue that every wall painter recreates every time they paint a wall blue. Why is the Blue Monochrome piece more than just a wall painted blue? [1] https://www.moma.org/collection/works/80103 https://www.moma.org/collection/works/80103
- WhompingWindows 5y ago
  Consider the time period and the historical context. It's modern times, Cold War is occurring, and WW1 and WW2 left scars across Western Europe and caused major changes in the art world, including being a boon to abstraction and fragmenting styles into many eclectic directions. Chemistry has DRASTICALLY altered painting from the Renaissance to the World War era. New pigments have been constantly highlighted and displayed in artwork. Finally, an insanely blue blue has been invented, bluer than any other blue paint in the past. The artist highlighted above attempts to showcase the new technology in its purest form. Though, despite this strive for purity of blue, the application is inherently uneven. If you look into the painted canvas up close, you will see imperfections and patterns in "just a wall". It's also a statement, it may cause reactions and cause viewers to question the boundary between art and not-art. It's not my cup of tea compared to masterworks of Van Gogh or Homer or any of the legendary painters, but art goes through many phases and is used to express many different ideas. What I do think is bonkers is that modern artists (who are well-connected) may be paid millions of dollars for these works, which to me don't showcase skill and talent, but which reward creative ideation and concepts.
  - jdmichal 5y ago
    > Finally, an insanely blue blue has been invented, bluer than any other blue paint in the past. The artist highlighted above attempts to showcase the new technology in its purest form. I was thinking something along these lines. Based on the first Wiki article, Klein was involved in developing this pigment. If so, the work stands on the merits of that achievement alone. He was, for that moment, literally the only person in the world that could have created that painting.
agumonkey 5y ago
funny how it's different when interpreted in biology limits also how no art teacher ever told us about Klein's blue the way you did.. they simply used it as an authority figure
Qub3d 5y ago
That's awesome. Looks like his hue is very, very close to YInMn blue, one of my favorite contemporary scientific discoveries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YInMn_Blue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YInMn_Blue
archduck 5y ago
Yes!! The lack of green-blue distinction is prevalent enough in linguistics that the term "grue" has entered the lexicon. Paul and Kay (1969) argue for a linguistic universal which posits that the set of which colors a language has is a function of how many colors it has. (Stealing from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_color_naming_debate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_...): 1. All languages contain terms for black and white. 2. If a language contains three terms, then it contains a term for red. 3. If a language contains four terms, then it contains a term for either green or yellow (but not both). 4. If a language contains five terms, then it contains terms for both green and yellow. 5. If a language contains six terms, then it contains a term for blue. 6. If a language contains seven terms, then it contains a term for brown. 7. If a language contains eight or more terms, then it contains terms for purple, pink, orange or gray. The opposite of the grue phenomenon exists too, i.e. languages which subdivide the "blue" part of the spectrum into separate lexemes. In Russian, for instance, goluboy = light blue, whereas siniy = blue to dark blue. This morning I was reading the Wikipedia entry for color revolution, and there's a quote from Belarusian President Lukashenko, "They [the West] think that Belarus is ready for some 'orange' or, what is a rather frightening option, 'blue' or 'cornflower blue' revolution." I had to chuckle about that - it sounds so goofy in the English translation, but that's only because we don't have a lexical distinction there. (Now I would have personally translated it to light blue, but that's another matter.)
- drcongo 5y ago
  Fantastic post, thank you!
- wchar_t 5y ago
  And I thought grues were the furry adventurer-eating dungeon-dwelling horrors!
herbstein 5y ago
I saw some of the same things you'd have seen in the MoMA (not actually called that) in Nice, France. Walking into the room of these insanely blue paintings and sculptures was almost a religious experience. It's the first time I experienced Stendhal Syndrome[0]. I just had to stand there and stare for a while. Yves Klein's "Leap into the Void"[1] is another one of his works that really grabbed me when I first saw it. Can't quite explain it. Those are the best types of art experiences in my book. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stendhal_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stendhal_syndrome [1]: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/266750 https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/266750
mmaunder 5y ago
Amazing, thanks for the pointer to Yves Klein. I’ve seen blue man group live and they have an otherworldly look in person, and I suspect it’s related to this phenomenon. I really like his combination of blue and grey images.

pier25 5y ago

Great anecdote! Reminded me of the short story Zima Blue by Alastair Reynolds (which was adapted into an animation short on Netlifx's "Love, Death and Robots").

thom 5y ago
I found that episode very moving. It captured the feeling I suspect many of us experience, of having started out with simple, blissful naivety, before slowly accreting layers of grown up, professional bullshit until a craft loses its joy. The desire to strip it all away, not just the ways in which your work has changed over the years but also the ways in which it has changed you. I had no idea Alastair Reynolds was behind the story, I’ve enjoyed his work quite separately.
- the_af 5y ago
  Apparently more than one "Love, Death + Robots" episode was based on Alastair Reynolds' work. "Beyond the Aquila Rift", for example. I also spotted references to other scifi authors. There's one episode from the first season that is almost 100% something Bradbury would have written (without me telling you which one, can you guess which episode I'm thinking of? Just to doublecheck my own perception), and of course "Pop Squad" from the second season is based on the short story of the same title by Paolo Bacigalupi (from "Pump Six and Other Stories"). And I'm sure I'm missing many more!
  - domdib 5y ago
    John Scalzi authored at least one episode in the first season, and I think another in the second.

selestify 5y ago

As someone who hasn't seen it in the flesh yet, and doesn't "get" modern art unless someone explicitly spells it out for me, could you elaborate more on why it's so spectacular? For example, Blue Monochrome [1] seems to my uneducated eye to be just a layer of pure blue that every wall painter recreates every time they paint a wall blue. Why is the Blue Monochrome piece more than just a wall painted blue? [1] https://www.moma.org/collection/works/80103 https://www.moma.org/collection/works/80103

WhompingWindows 5y ago
Consider the time period and the historical context. It's modern times, Cold War is occurring, and WW1 and WW2 left scars across Western Europe and caused major changes in the art world, including being a boon to abstraction and fragmenting styles into many eclectic directions. Chemistry has DRASTICALLY altered painting from the Renaissance to the World War era. New pigments have been constantly highlighted and displayed in artwork. Finally, an insanely blue blue has been invented, bluer than any other blue paint in the past. The artist highlighted above attempts to showcase the new technology in its purest form. Though, despite this strive for purity of blue, the application is inherently uneven. If you look into the painted canvas up close, you will see imperfections and patterns in "just a wall". It's also a statement, it may cause reactions and cause viewers to question the boundary between art and not-art. It's not my cup of tea compared to masterworks of Van Gogh or Homer or any of the legendary painters, but art goes through many phases and is used to express many different ideas. What I do think is bonkers is that modern artists (who are well-connected) may be paid millions of dollars for these works, which to me don't showcase skill and talent, but which reward creative ideation and concepts.
- jdmichal 5y ago
  > Finally, an insanely blue blue has been invented, bluer than any other blue paint in the past. The artist highlighted above attempts to showcase the new technology in its purest form. I was thinking something along these lines. Based on the first Wiki article, Klein was involved in developing this pigment. If so, the work stands on the merits of that achievement alone. He was, for that moment, literally the only person in the world that could have created that painting.

agumonkey 5y ago

funny how it's different when interpreted in biology limits also how no art teacher ever told us about Klein's blue the way you did.. they simply used it as an authority figure

Qub3d 5y ago

That's awesome. Looks like his hue is very, very close to YInMn blue, one of my favorite contemporary scientific discoveries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YInMn_Blue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YInMn_Blue

archduck 5y ago

Yes!! The lack of green-blue distinction is prevalent enough in linguistics that the term "grue" has entered the lexicon. Paul and Kay (1969) argue for a linguistic universal which posits that the set of which colors a language has is a function of how many colors it has. (Stealing from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_color_naming_debate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_...): 1. All languages contain terms for black and white. 2. If a language contains three terms, then it contains a term for red. 3. If a language contains four terms, then it contains a term for either green or yellow (but not both). 4. If a language contains five terms, then it contains terms for both green and yellow. 5. If a language contains six terms, then it contains a term for blue. 6. If a language contains seven terms, then it contains a term for brown. 7. If a language contains eight or more terms, then it contains terms for purple, pink, orange or gray. The opposite of the grue phenomenon exists too, i.e. languages which subdivide the "blue" part of the spectrum into separate lexemes. In Russian, for instance, goluboy = light blue, whereas siniy = blue to dark blue. This morning I was reading the Wikipedia entry for color revolution, and there's a quote from Belarusian President Lukashenko, "They [the West] think that Belarus is ready for some 'orange' or, what is a rather frightening option, 'blue' or 'cornflower blue' revolution." I had to chuckle about that - it sounds so goofy in the English translation, but that's only because we don't have a lexical distinction there. (Now I would have personally translated it to light blue, but that's another matter.)

drcongo 5y ago
Fantastic post, thank you!
wchar_t 5y ago
And I thought grues were the furry adventurer-eating dungeon-dwelling horrors!

herbstein 5y ago

I saw some of the same things you'd have seen in the MoMA (not actually called that) in Nice, France. Walking into the room of these insanely blue paintings and sculptures was almost a religious experience. It's the first time I experienced Stendhal Syndrome[0]. I just had to stand there and stare for a while. Yves Klein's "Leap into the Void"[1] is another one of his works that really grabbed me when I first saw it. Can't quite explain it. Those are the best types of art experiences in my book. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stendhal_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stendhal_syndrome [1]: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/266750 https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/266750

mmaunder 5y ago

Amazing, thanks for the pointer to Yves Klein. I’ve seen blue man group live and they have an otherworldly look in person, and I suspect it’s related to this phenomenon. I really like his combination of blue and grey images.