Life is full of wonderful coincidences that crop up and add sparkle and fascination to everything.
The colour blue dominates my latest series of happy coincidences. It all started in Japan with my visiting Tokushima, Japan, famed historic centre of indigo dyeing of fabrics and of paper on the lovely island of Shikoku. As I wrote in a previous blog, the complex, sophisticated process of creating first the actual indigo dye and then impregnating textiles or washi paper with the glorious, subtle shades of blue was most fascinating. I had previously met indigo dyeing on the coast of Georgia, where it is still practised on Ossabaw Island, but the Japanese indigo dyeing heritage was utterly memorable.
Back in Mallorca, where the blues of the Mediterranean Sea vie in their restless variations with the luminous azures of the winter skies, I feel cradled in a world that has celebrated blues since distant antiquity. It is such a heritage - the famed Egyptian blue that began to show up in frescoes or ceramics almost 5000 years ago, the blues of Minoan paintings at Knossos in Crete, the sparkling blues of glass at Murano or here in Mallorca, or the ground lapis lazuli pigment in paintings created by Fra Angelico, Michelangelo or Titian amongst others.
Hippopotamus, ceramic glazed with Egyptian blue, XII-XVII dynasties, Middle Kingdom. (Image courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum)
Dolphin frescoes at Knossos, Crete
Mid-16th century glass flask, Murano, (Image courtesy of Giorgio Busetto)
Annunciation and Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden, Fra angelico, 1425-26, tempera (with lapis lazuli pigment) and gold on panel, (Image courtesy of Prado Museum, Madrid)
It was thus only seemingly logical that my latest meeting with blues should be in the form of a recently opened exhibition at “La Caixa” Foundation in Palma, “Blue: the Colour of Modernism”. Under this chromatic umbrella, many facets of art created from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century were gathered in a celebration of blues in all their tones. Once synthetic pigments were invented, artists had a very wide selection of subtle shades of blue and they used them to great effect. Not only did they invoke emotional states of mind but aesthetic fashions that ranged from symbolism in Western painting to the ukiyo-e woodblock prints of the Japanese floating world.
Lake Thun with Symmetrical Reflections, 1909, oil on canvas, Ferdinand Holder, Art and History Museums, Geneva ((Photograph J. Cook)
Barcelona Port Breakwater, watercolour, 1905, Antoni Fabres Costa, Catalonia National Art Museum, Barcelona, (Photograph J. Cook)
Gishi eimeiden no uchi, 1866, Utagawa Kunisada, dyes on paper, “La Caixa” collection, Anglada Camarasa (J. Cook photograph)
No longer were they constrained by the natural pigments of indigo, lapis lazuli and cobalt blue: French ultramarine, Prussian blue and finally cerulean blues became available, often contained in the zinc tubes of paint that freed artists from the studio so they could paint en plein air. Landscape painting, moody, poetic or celebratory, was infused with blues.
Twilight in Pollensa Bay, 1914-1936, oil on wood panel, Herman Anglada Camarasa, “La Caixa” collection, Anglada Camarasa (J. Cook photograph)
The Young Plane Tree, soil on canvas, c. 1891, Ferdinand Holder, Art and History Museums, Geneva ((Photograph J. Cook)
Panorama, the Alps, c. 1876, oil on canvas, Gustave Courbet, Art and History Museums, Geneva ((Photograph J. Cook)
Barcelona Rooftops, April 1896, oil on canvas mounted on wood, Pablo Picasso, Picasso Museum, Barcelona (J. Cook photograph)
At the same time, the late 19th century was angst-ridden with ever-increasing materialism and a questioning of values; beauty, often evoked and epitomized by blue by poets and artists alike, seemed a pathway to a more mystic symbolism and enriched inner life. As the exhibition cited, Rubén Dario wrote, blue was: “the colour of dreams, the colour of art, a Hellenic and Homeric hue, the colour of the ocean and the firmament.”
Untitled, no date, oil on canvas, Lluis Graner i Arrufi, Sabadell Bank Collection (Photograph J. Cook)
Gold and Blue, c. 1902, oil on canvas, Joaquim Mir, Catalonia National Art Museum, Barcelona, (Photograph J. Cook)
“L’Assomoir”, oil on canvas, 1901-1902, Santiago Rusiñol, Official Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Navigation, Barcelona (Photograph J. Cook)
The multitude of shades of blue allowed artists to evoke the ever-changing luminosity of skies over mountains and seas, in tempests and sunlight. Still mostly depicted in realistic fashion, these paintings reminded viewers of the grandeur and poetic power of nature.
Landscape (The Estuary), 1911, oil on canvas, Felix Edouard Vallotton, Art and History Museums, Geneva ((Photograph J. Cook)
House at the Water’s Edge, oil on canvas, 1srt half of 20th century, Maurice de Vlaminck, Art and History Museums, Geneva ((Photograph J. Cook)
At the same time, other artists were exploring the effects of synaesthesia, the association of elements (such as music) from different sensory domains, to combine colour and vibration to widen the scope of the artworks, for instance to evoke music in nocturnal scenes. Twilight, “the blue hour” can also be melancholic, symbolizing solitude, nostalgia or even death. Likewise, solitude and self-absorption are emphasized in portraits when blues play a key role; Ferdinand Hodler’s portraits, for instance, are deceptively simple but are a carefully crafted harmony of tones that take one to the depths of the subject’s soul in the portrait.
Portrait of Francine Maylac, 1916, oil on canvas, Ferdinand Holder, Art and History Museums, Geneva ((Photograph J. Cook)
Tavern Interior, c. 1895-1910, oil on canvas, Lluis Graner i Arrufi, Catalonia National Art Museum, Barcelona, (Photograph J. Cook)
Night, the Port, c. 1900, oil on canvas, Lluis Graner i Arrufi, Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Madrid, (Photograph J. Cook)
The nuances of this exhibition, “Blue: the Colour of Modernism”, call for return visits to absorb all the subtleties of this very varied selection of paintings. Thinking about this colour’s role in visual art and even how it is applied to the painting surface evoke connections between the music of the same period – Debussy, Gabriel Fauré, Ravel or Camille Saint-Saens. In the same way, poetry was threaded through the often blue-dominated art of that time, whether it was Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Verlaine or Rubén Dario. Blue shows up too in the allusions to the development of psychoanalysis during that period, when the transformation of an agrarian world to a speeded-up industrial world were fuelling great societal anxieties.
How rewarding and thought-provoking my run of blue coincidences has been! As I gaze outside again to a cerulean sky, the connections to blue run on and on in my mind - all thanks to so many artists down the millennia.