International Klein Blue: The Most Perfect Expression Of Blue

[rvisser]

And I wonder about this ancient work - an image of Dionysus with a background of extraordinary blue - the image is from Wikipedia Commons - it is an amazing blue with some of the same characteristics of IKB (examine the small section immediately above the grapes). If Noodler's Elysium Fields ink is the closest approximation of IKB, and if IKB is the most perfect blue, and if blue is the most spiritual color, then Elysium would be the abode of the god of wine, Dionysus, as it is in the attached image. Dionysos is the god of wine. Shall we suggest a mythic connection between wine and ink? Are we the small child reaching for the grapes?

 

Satyr giving a grapevine to Bacchus child. Cameo glass, 1st half of the 1st century AD. From Italy.

 

Wiki link HERE. Petit Palais image and link HERE (Paris, Dutuit Bequest, 1902). It seems that the photographer saturated the blue color in the wiki link. It is very intense compared to the Petit Palais image.

Edited September 14, 2012 by rvisser

[rvisser]

And I wonder about this ancient work - an image of Dionysus with a background of extraordinary blue - the image is from Wikipedia Commons - it is an amazing blue with some of the same characteristics of IKB (examine the small section immediately above the grapes). If Noodler's Elysium Fields ink is the closest approximation of IKB, and if IKB is the most perfect blue, and if blue is the most spiritual color, then Elysium would be the abode of the god of wine, Dionysus, as it is in the attached image. Dionysos is the god of wine. Shall we suggest a mythic connection between wine and ink? Are we the small child reaching for the grapes?

 

Satyr giving a grapevine to Bacchus child. Cameo glass, 1st half of the 1st century AD. From Italy.

 

Wiki link HERE. Petit Palais image and link HERE (Paris, Dutuit Bequest, 1902). It seems that the photographer saturated the blue color in the wiki link. It is very intense compared to the Petit Palais image.

 

Here is the image from Petit Palais after Photoshop Auto Levels and Full Saturation with marcomillions study directly above. Now what do we have?

Edited September 14, 2012 by rvisser

[rvisser]

Here is the image from Petit Palais fully saturated and set below marcomillions' color study. Now what do we have? Squint a little.

Edited September 14, 2012 by rvisser

[marcomillions]

Here is the image from Petit Palais fully saturated and set below marcomillions' color study. Now what do we have? Squint a little.

Well, rv, in your "reconstruction" it appears that IKB itself is pointing at Dionysus as "da man." And certainly, one connection is clear: Socrates recognized drunkenness as a form of divine madness, and everyone on this site (just about) is mad, so there is demonstrably an affinity between wine and the users of ink.

 

I think we could probably make other connections, too: wine and inspiration, inspiration and writing, writing and ink. No problem. Or, the poet Wallace Stevens claimed blue was the color of imagination, so imagination-writing-ink, piece of cake.

 

There is a little problem with Elysium, which was always a place reserved for humans. The gods would for the most part live on Mt. Olympus. But Dionysus gets around a lot, so linking him to Elysium some way or other shouldn't be too difficult.

 

But to come back to the question of the color blue. I think the faded blue that appears in the Petit Palace's image of the Dionysus plaque can't be correct. The text regarding the plaque says the plaque is closest in style to the Portland Vase owned by the British Museum. Here is the British Museum's own digitization of the vase.

 

 

The blue, you notice, is closer to the Wiki image of the plaque than the Petit Palace's image. What shall we do now?

 

Marc

[rvisser]

Here is the image from Petit Palais fully saturated and set below marcomillions' color study. Now what do we have? Squint a little.

Well, rv, in your "reconstruction" it appears that IKB itself is pointing at Dionysus as "da man." And certainly, one connection is clear: Socrates recognized drunkenness as a form of divine madness, and everyone on this site (just about) is mad, so there is demonstrably an affinity between wine and the users of ink.

 

I think we could probably make other connections, too: wine and inspiration, inspiration and writing, writing and ink. No problem. Or, the poet Wallace Stevens claimed blue was the color of imagination, so imagination-writing-ink, piece of cake.

 

There is a little problem with Elysium, which was always a place reserved for humans. The gods would for the most part live on Mt. Olympus. But Dionysus gets around a lot, so linking him to Elysium some way or other shouldn't be too difficult.

 

But to come back to the question of the color blue. I think the faded blue that appears in the Petit Palace's image of the Dionysus plaque can't be correct. The text regarding the plaque says the plaque is closest in style to the Portland Vase owned by the British Museum. Here is the British Museum's own digitization of the vase.

 

 

The blue, you notice, is closer to the Wiki image of the plaque than the Petit Palace's image. What shall we do now?

 

Marc

 

Thanks for your correction on Elysium Fields, the Wallace Stevens' 'blue of the imagination', and the beautiful image of the Portland Vase . . . all of which I will investigate further. I am particularly fond of Wallace Stevens, so I will take him up again.

 

Some reading this discussion may think all of this is not to the point. But what is the point? In one of his letters, Wallace Stevens said:

 

"When I was a boy I used to think that things progressed by contrasts, that there was a law of contrasts. But this was building the world out of blocks. Afterwards, I came to think of the energizing that comes from mere interplay, interaction. Thus, the various faculties of the mind co-exist and interact, and there is much delight in this mere co-existence as man and woman find in each other's company. . . . Cross reflections, modifications, counter-balances, complements, giving and taking are illimitable. They make things inter-dependent and their interdependence sustains them and gives them pleasure." - Wallace Stevens (Letters, p. 368)

 

Now I think we are off to these museums to see the works under discussion: Klein's, the plaque at the Petit Palais, and the Portland Vase at the British Museum . . . or can someone who is closer by help us out?

 

Importantly, this discussion has brought me onto new paths . . . but, as they are no longer directly relevant to inky thoughts, I will follow them up in other ways.

 

I thank you for your generous contribution to this discussion.

 

rv

Edited September 14, 2012 by rvisser

[marcomillions]

Now I think we are off to these museums to see the works under discussion: Klein's, the plaque at the Petit Palais, and the Portland Vase at the British Museum . . . or can someone who is closer by help us out?

 

Importantly, this discussion has brought me onto new paths . . . but, as they are no longer directly relevant to inky thoughts, I will follow them up in other ways.

 

I thank you for your generous contribution to this discussion.

 

rv

No need to thank me. The discussion has given me pleasure too. And while the Stevens specultions may be off on a tangent (is that like the lawyers' "off on a frolic of his/her own?"), we still haven't identified the ink that seems most to remind us of IKB. If no one has helped run down the Petit Palais' Dionysus plaque and/or an example of IKB by November, I promise to do so then, when I return to Paris. In addition to the Petit Palais' Dionysus plaque, the Pompidou Center has a number of Kleins, which we can hope are on display. I'll try to bring ink samples when I go to the museums.

 

Marc

Edited September 14, 2012 by marcomillions

[rvisser]

Now I think we are off to these museums to see the works under discussion: Klein's, the plaque at the Petit Palais, and the Portland Vase at the British Museum . . . or can someone who is closer by help us out?

 

Importantly, this discussion has brought me onto new paths . . . but, as they are no longer directly relevant to inky thoughts, I will follow them up in other ways.

 

I thank you for your generous contribution to this discussion.

 

rv

No need to thank me. The discussion has given me pleasure too. And while the Stevens specultions may be off on a tangent (is that like the lawyers' "off on a frolic of his/her own?"), we still haven't identified the ink that seems most to remind us of IKB. If no one has helped run down the Petit Palais' Dionysus plaque and/or an example of IKB by November, I promise to do so then, when I return to Paris. In addition to the Petit Palais' Dionysus plaque, the Pompidou Center has a number of Kleins, which we can hope are on display. I'll try to bring ink samples when I go to the museums.

 

Marc

 

You are too much! Please keep me informed . . . and best wishes for your trip . . . would that I could join you there.

 

best, rv

[marcomillions]

Hi rv,

 

Here's another comparison block to show us another reason that finding an ink to match International Klein Blue is going to be difficult. This one ought to make Mike Hosea happy, for it reveals how very slippery matching colors in other media inevitably is.

 

So far, we've been looking at inks for their closeness to a standard we're trying to match: the International Klein Blue. We've found some inks that seemed very close, only to have one user (Mike) of one of the closest (Waterman Florida) tell us that he didn't think IKB and Florida were especially close in real life, throwing into doubt the fidelity of the online swatches to the real colors of the inks.

 

Um, why should that doubt only extend to the inks? Think of IKB itself. While Klein knew what color constituted his Blue (you gave its hue-saturation-value (brightness) formula in your first post. To the extent that it is physically possible to match those values when mixing paint, he could hit that blue with accuracy anytime he wanted to paint one of his monochromes in IKB, and any other artist could duplicate the task. But how well are we doing in understanding what that blue looks like?

 

Ooops. If we go to the web in search of examples of IKB, we find--we're not surprised at this, are we?--that the digitized images of his monochromes in IKB look a lot alike . . . as long as you don't look too closely. In the block below, the three vertical "swatches" are examples from museum images of Klein monochromes in their collection. At left is "IKB3" from the Pompidou Center in Paris; in the middle is the monochrome at the Museum of Modern Art in New York; at right is "IKB79" from the Tate in London. As I said already, "Ooops." The reasons for their deviation from each other are manifold: the differences in the calibration of the cameras with which the photos of the canvases were taken; the different circumstances of the photography session (color temperature of the lights used, for example, or artifacts introduced by any compression schemes used in saving and storing the images); the differences in calibration of the monitors used by the archivists in preparing the images for presentation. I could go on.

 

 

Oh, you want to know about the horizontal swatch? I generated that one by inputting the hue-saturation-value formula into Photoshop. So it should be--for my monitor and my Photoshop--the most perfect expression of IKB. Two comments (one easy to see, the other Lucretius' gift that goes on giving): (1) Um, no surprise here either: this IKB doesn't match any of the three "real" IKBs from the museums. (2) This I hadn't quite expected: after I generated this sample by inputting the right values for the H-S-B formula of IKB, I asked Photoshop to report those values back to me. It sampled the sample and reported back different values than I'd input. That could be ameliorated by using a graphic format other than JPEG, but as we can't be sure everyone knows that, that adds another of Mr. Lucretius' swerves to keep us honest but frustrated. (And, for another example, this site won't let me upload a TIFF file, which did the best job of maintaining values.)

 

Enough for now. It will take seeing the paintings and the ink in person, obviously.

 

Marc

[Dinasaurus]

I don't have much to add here other than that I have found this thread to be absolutely fascinating. Thank you to rvisser! Of course, now I'm off to go buy each of these inks and test them out for myself...yay (semi)science!

Edited September 16, 2012 by Dinasaurus

[rvisser]

I don't have much to add here other than that I have found this thread to be absolutely fascinating. Thank you to rvisser! Of course, now I'm off to go buy each of these inks and test them out for myself...yay (semi)science!

 

Thanks, Dinasaurus. It looks like what we have here is an Ultramarine Blue in a special binder (Adam Medium 25). HERE is a link to the company that made the paint for Klein. The next time you're in Paris, check it out.

 

ADAM MONTMARTRE

Téléphone : 01 46 06 60 38

Fax : 01 42 59 06 83

96 rue damremont

75018 PARIS

E-Mail :

adam.montmartre (at) gmail.com

remplacer (at) par @

[marcomillions]

Splendid work, rv, tracking down Adam. It's a little frustrating that we can buy the binder from the shop, but not the mix of pigments to mix into the binder. Well, we're looking for an ink anyway, not a paint. (But I would have liked to keep a small jar of the authoritative IKB on my desk, as a sort of talisman.0

 

I'll have a listen to that interview Monsieur Adam gave. If I can understand it--and if there's anything interesting in the interview, I'll report on it.

 

Marc

[DAYoung]

Subscribe.

[ukobke]

I really do not understand ! What is this all about? What are we talking about?

 

 

Do we accept this color for FOUNTAIN PEN INKS as the perfect blue? then we do know what to get.

 

 

Please have in mind that YVES KLEIN is the only person ever in the humanity to accept that that was the "perfect blue". Many questions if he really was an artist...

 

 

The WIKIPEDIA really tells his story.

 

 

 

THERE IS NO PERFECT blue or pink or brown or...

 

 

 

THERE ARE ONLY ABSOLUTE COLORS TECHNICALLY WISE: WHITE AND BLACK.

 

 

(On the other hand Botticelli - as some "experts" say- has performed the best color of sky. So if sky represents blue, what is the point of "best blue"?

 

 

 

Last but not least..... :gaah:

 

 

 

[marcomillions]

I really do not understand ! What is this all about? What are we talking about?

 

 

<snip>

 

The WIKIPEDIA really tells his story.

 

 

<snip>

 

Last but not least..... :gaah:

Before I forget: I absolutely love your "cranky faces." A great step forward.

 

"What is this all about? What are we talking about?"

 

Why such deep metaphysical questions? How can I possibly answer them?

 

What I can reply to: "The WIKIPEDIA really tells his [Yves Klein's] story."

 

Ah, but which Wiki, dear ukobke? The English wiki spends 2909 words telling Klein's story; the French wiki needs as many as 5285 words; the Italian liquidates him in 1048; the Spanish even fewer, I believe. And, as you would imagine, the stories are subtly different. Only the French wiki (and the Greek) mentions Klein's interest in Rosicrucianism, for example. All mention his parents were painters too, but most in a sentence which says no more than that. Only the English wiki bothers to mention in what styles his parents painted. I could go on. The figure is as elusive as his intentions with IKB.

 

But to come to the most relevant aspects of Klein's story.

 

(1) Signing the sky. What a magnificent gesture. The 19-year-old Klein looks up at the sky and decides to become a painter. He lifts his arm and makes the movements as if writing his name on the sky as his first work. What bravado! Except the French wiki says it happened when he was 21, and the Italian wiki ignores the story altogether.

 

(2) The creation and patenting of International Klein Blue. Again, what a master-stroke! To patent a color. WTH? Does that mean that anyone who wants to paint in that color (or in any blue?) has to pay him royalties? But the audacity of the gesture is again breathtaking. Apparently, when he first started exhibiting his monochromes in IKB he was asked by the organizers of the competitions to which he sent canvases for inclusion to add some other object in another color to the canvas, please. Klein refused. "Just a line, just a dot in another color, please?" Klein was adamant. Is the story apocryphal? Yes, perhaps.

 

Other ambiguities also exist about this one central event in his short life (shorter even than Mozart's!). According to the French wiki, the invention of IKB came from Klein's desire to "fix the intense luminosity of [a particular blue] as a symbol of the incarnation of individual sensibility--between its infinite extent and its immediacy. . . . [iKB] would embody the dialectic between matter and spirit, the physical and the spiritual, time and infinity." The color was conceived in 1956 and patented in 1960. But for Italian wiki, the discovery comes in 1955 and is the result of a search for a medium that would keep pigments from losing their luminosity when used as paints. Thus, seeing this as primarily a technical issue (all that dialectic of time and infinity isn't mentioned), the Italian wiki is the only one to comment that the patented color was never produced. The English wiki inclines toward the Italian (the dialectic is absent from it too), though it gives an extended meaning to invention of the color (and vague about when it occurred): "to maintain the 'authenticity of the pure idea'."

 

Finally, the patent of IKB refers to both the fixing agent (for it was the process of fixing a pigment in a paintable medium in a way that preserved its luminosity that was patentable, not the color alone) and the color that together compose IKB. Except the color which corresponds to the number given in the patent is a yellow, not a blue.

 

So, the thread was begun, I believe, to honor an artist who had the audacity to claim to know what the "most perfect expression of blue" was, and indeed had patented it. (Or not.) Was there a fountain pen ink that corresponded to this color? If so, wouldn't you like to have it around so that, whenever you used it and someone commented, "That's a nice blue ink," you could respond, "A nice ink? I'll have you know that's the most perfect expression of blue ink." I know I'd like that option. So that's why we've been trying to figure out which existing ink seems closest to IKB, and most recently we've been troubled to try to figure out what IKB itself looks like.

 

But "what is this all about?" I'm afraid I'm no closer to being able to answer that than I was before.

 

In friendship,

 

Marc

[marcomillions]

Hi rv,

 

I meant to mention before: I admire your new avatar.

 

Marc

[rvisser]

I really do not understand ! What is this all about? What are we talking about?

 

 

Do we accept this color for FOUNTAIN PEN INKS as the perfect blue? then we do know what to get.

 

 

Please have in mind that YVES KLEIN is the only person ever in the humanity to accept that that was the "perfect blue". Many questions if he really was an artist...

 

 

The WIKIPEDIA really tells his story.

 

 

 

THERE IS NO PERFECT blue or pink or brown or...

 

 

 

THERE ARE ONLY ABSOLUTE COLORS TECHNICALLY WISE: WHITE AND BLACK.

 

 

(On the other hand Botticelli - as some "experts" say- has performed the best color of sky. So if sky represents blue, what is the point of "best blue"?

 

 

 

Last but not least..... :gaah:

 

 

 

 

Thanks for your input and questions regarding the focus (or seeming lack of focus) of this discussion. I think marc spoke to the question with real verve . . . but let me add a quote from Kandinsky that may shed a bit more light on the subject:

 

"The power of profound meaning is found in blue, and first in its physical movements (1) of retreat from the spectator, (2) of turning in upon its own centre. The inclination of blue to depth is so strong that its inner appeal is stronger when its shade is deeper.

 

"Blue is the typical heavenly colour. The ultimate feeling it creates is one of rest. When it sinks almost to black, it echoes a grief that is hardly human. When it rises to white, a movement little suited to it, its appeal to men grows weaker and more distant. In music a light blue is like a flute, a darker blue a cello; a still darker thunderous double bass; and the darkest blue of all -- an organ." - from Wassily Kandinsky, "Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 1912).

 

So, perhaps, no matter what the medium - ink, paint, clothing, or the vast blue sky - blue speaks to the human soul in its deepest profundity. The Japanese philosopher, Keiji Nishitani - among others - characterizes the most profound human experience as like the vast blue sky (" True emptiness is nothing other than what reaches awareness in all of us as our own absolute self-nature . . . It is an absolute openness.") He considers the blue sky to be more than an analogy.

 

One might ask then, which blue might most closely approximate this profundity . . . and one might also wish to write with ink that reminds one of this experience, or draws one toward this experience . . . so that even the simplest act of writing might "effect the quality of the day" and draw us closer to our authentic being.

 

all best thoughts,

 

rv

Edited September 17, 2012 by rvisser

[rvisser]

Hi rv,

 

I meant to mention before: I admire your new avatar.

 

Marc

 

Thanks, Marc. I appreciate it.

 

best,

 

rv

[marcomillions]

Back in post #30, in our continuing quest for the ink that represents "the most perfect expression of blue, rvisser found the shop at which IKB had been invented--and patented. Rvisser found as well a link to a radio interview the owner of the shop--and the material, if not conceptual, inventor of IKB gave very near the e5nd of last year. While in post #33 or was it in responding to #33?) I pointed out some problems with the patent--like the fact that the pigment the patent refers ti us a yellow, not a blue--in post #31 I promised to upload a translation of the interview if it seemed worth it. And, in some way or other, it did seem worth it in the end. The broadcast begins, in fact, with a brief recording of Yves Klein himself.

 

In any case, here's the transcript. For the recording itself, go to post #30 and follow rvisser's link to it. Have fun. Klein obviously was, though he was serious about this too.

 

Marc

 

Transcript here. Interview with E. Adam.doc

[rvisser]

Back in post #30, in our continuing quest for the ink that represents "the most perfect expression of blue, rvisser found the shop at which IKB had been invented--and patented. Rvisser found as well a link to a radio interview the owner of the shop--and the material, if not conceptual, inventor of IKB gave very near the e5nd of last year. While in post #33 or was it in responding to #33?) I pointed out some problems with the patent--like the fact that the pigment the patent refers ti us a yellow, not a blue--in post #31 I promised to upload a translation of the interview if it seemed worth it. And, in some way or other, it did seem worth it in the end. The broadcast begins, in fact, with a brief recording of Yves Klein himself.

 

In any case, here's the transcript. For the recording itself, go to post #30 and follow rvisser's link to it. Have fun. Klein obviously was, though he was serious about this too.

 

Marc

 

Transcript here. Interview with E. Adam.doc

 

Thanks much for posting a translation of the Adam interview. I really appreciate it.

 

Though brief, the entire interview is of interest, and the following remarks stood out for me:

. . . Gaston Bachelard: “At first there was nothing; after, there was a deep nothing; and then a blue depth.”

 

. . . ‘The blood of sensibility is blue,’ Shelley says, and that’s precisely my opinion, too.

 

. . . “This is nonetheless a blue that takes us out of time.”

 

The predominant blue in ITB is ultramarine blue. According to Wiki: "The name derives from Middle Latin ultramarinus, literally "beyond the sea" because it was imported from Asia by sea.

 

Anyone interested in learning more about the use of ultramarine blue in art history may be interested in the link below:

 

 

"As a blue, ultramarine was considered far superior to azurite. Because it was a tonally rich color, in contrast to the relatively flat and grainy azurite, ultramarine was usually preferred by panel painters. In addition, the hue of ultramarine—a slightly purplish-tinged blue—was held to be the ideal complement to vermilion and gold on panels."

 

THE IDENTIFICATION OF BLUE PIGMENTS IN EARLY SIENESEPAINTINGS BY COLOR INFRARED PHOTOGRAPHY by CATHLEEN HOENIGER

 

 

 

 

[rvisser]

If we simply focus on Ultramarine Blue as being the closest approximation to IKB, Rotring makes, or has made, an Ultramarine blue: Rotring Brilliant Blue. I wonder how close it comes to IKB?

 

There was an earlier post discussing this ink by vans4444 - with swab comparisons HERE.