Edition of 3 + 2APs
76 x 51 cm / 30 x 20 in
Edition of 6 + 2APs
Takashi Arai · Sue Arrowsmith · Pierre Bergian · Celine Bodin · Susan Derges · Ralph Fleck · Laila Tara H · Andrzej Jackowski · Leila Jeffreys · Ken Kiff · Nina Murdoch ·
Ornulf Opdahl · David Quinn · Ciara Roche · Santeri Tuori
The chase for blue is never ending, and yet remains elusive, as Lavinia Greenlaw writes in Blue Field:
‘I keep my distance, as things turn blue
through stillness and distance;
as everything blue is distant’
Artists since Neolithic times have chased blue even more than gold. In ancient times Lapis Lazuli produced the most treasured pigment. The Egyptians were the first to recreate a synthetic version of this pigment, with blue considered highly valuable as it could lead the soul to immortality.
Millenniums later Kandinsky continued to explore the colour in this vein. ‘Blue’ he wrote in On the Spiritual in Art, ‘assumes overtones of a superhuman sorrow. It becomes like an infinite self-absorption in that profound state of seriousness which has and can have, no end. As it tends towards the bright tones, to which blue is, however, less suited, it takes on a more indifferent character and appears to the spectator remote and impersonal, like the high, pale blue sky.’ In the process of attributing emotions to colours, he dubbed blue the typically ‘heavenly colour.’
The start of the 20th century saw Picasso’s mournful Blue Period, but the prize for obsession of the last century must surely go to IKB, Yves Klein Blue. The passion for the colour is far from dead, spilling forcefully into contemporary art.
