I was at Tate Modern (London’s modern art museum) over the weekend and saw IKB 79 – my first time encountering International Klein Blue in the flesh.
Description in the catalogue: IKB 79 was one of nearly two hundred blue monochrome paintings Yves Klein made during his short life.
The letters IKB stand for International Klein Blue, a distinctive ultramarine which Klein registered as a trademark colour in 1957. He considered that this colour had a quality close to pure space and he associated it with immaterial values beyond what can be seen or touched.
(There are other colours owned by artists including Vantablack, the blackest black, under exclusive license to Anish Kapoor; and PINK, the pinkest pink, by Stuart Semple which is available to any artist for $3.99 except Anish Kapoor: Online buyers are even required to sign a sworn statement that they are not Anish Kapoor, are not related to him, and that the pigment will not end up in his hands.)
What I hadn’t expected about International Klein Blue:
IKB 79 is so large, and the blue is so deep. As I looked it filled my eyes and somehow, an illusion I guess, something happening in the retina, it saturated me, I stopped seeing it.
Instead after 30 seconds or so: I began to see a deep black together with IKB, both at once, behind it somehow. Beyond the blue, the void.
Yves Klein’s origin story (BBC):
One summer’s day in 1947, three young men were sitting on a beach in Nice in the south of France.
Klein, the third man:
The third man opted for the mineral realm, before lying back and staring up at the ultramarine infinity of the heavens. Then, with the contentment of someone who had suddenly decided what course his life should take, he turned to his friends and announced, “The blue sky is my first artwork.”
And, seeing International Klein Blue, I understand: it is the sky. Not so much in colour - though of course yes that too - but in a truer sense. Behind the sky there is the infinite depth, the darkness, the black of space.
Even the azure of the south of France, after the gazing up with the innocence of youth, after that, the reality of – well, everything.
Art!
ANYWAY: it’s hot in London.
The temperature today and tomorrow is forecast to hit 40C.
Here’s a list of the hottest day each year from 1900 in the UK. It’s never been 40C. It’s been 37C twice and 38C twice, that’s all.
Walking to the train station this morning, it was unnaturally quiet – people have been advised to stay home.
The birds sang. The trees are green and in full leaf. It’s summer. The heat.
The blue sky – threatens.
Hot days, blue skies, have changed since I was a kid, slowly. A mesofact.
It used to be that the blue sky was about bbq and the beach and hanging out in the forest with friends. Gorgeous days.
Now it’s that, but also the blue sky is sinister somehow.
Don’t you get that, just a little?
It’s a quiet reminder of the climate crisis. It’s not going to get cooler from here on out. This is a warning from the future: as I get older this will happen more regularly at first; then this will happen every summer. Wild burns and sea levels rising; fire and flood. The ghost of summers yet to come. A silent glance cloaked innocuously in a calm July sky; it’s blue right now with wisps of cloud. It’s always going to be there now, that feeling. I mean, I still enjoy it, it’s still a beautiful day, but.
An omen overhead.
It’s taken 30 years not 30 seconds but, same same, the black beyond the blue.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider sharing it by email or on social media. Here’s the link. Thanks, —Matt.
‘Yes, we’ll see them together some Saturday afternoon then,’ she said. ‘I won’t have any hand in your not going to Cathedral on Sunday morning. I suppose we must be getting back. What time was it when you looked at your watch just now?’ "In China and some other countries it is not considered necessary to give the girls any education; but in Japan it is not so. The girls are educated here, though not so much as the boys; and of late years they have established schools where they receive what we call the higher branches of instruction. Every year new schools for girls are opened; and a great many of the Japanese who formerly would not be seen in public with their wives have adopted the Western idea, and bring their wives into society. The marriage laws have been arranged so as to allow the different classes to marry among[Pg 258] each other, and the government is doing all it can to improve the condition of the women. They were better off before than the women of any other Eastern country; and if things go on as they are now going, they will be still better in a few years. The world moves. "Frank and Fred." She whispered something to herself in horrified dismay; but then she looked at me with her eyes very blue and said "You'll see him about it, won't you? You must help unravel this tangle, Richard; and if you do I'll--I'll dance at your wedding; yours and--somebody's we know!" Her eyes began forewith. Lawrence laughed silently. He seemed to be intensely amused about something. He took a flat brown paper parcel from his pocket. making a notable addition to American literature. I did truly. "Surely," said the minister, "surely." There might have been men who would have remembered that Mrs. Lawton was a tough woman, even for a mining town, and who would in the names of their own wives have refused to let her cross the threshold of their homes. But he saw that she was ill, and he did not so much as hesitate. "I feel awful sorry for you sir," said the Lieutenant, much moved. "And if I had it in my power you should go. But I have got my orders, and I must obey them. I musn't allow anybody not actually be longing to the army to pass on across the river on the train." "Throw a piece o' that fat pine on the fire. Shorty," said the Deacon, "and let's see what I've got." "Further admonitions," continued the Lieutenant, "had the same result, and I was about to call a guard to put him under arrest, when I happened to notice a pair of field-glasses that the prisoner had picked up, and was evidently intending to appropriate to his own use, and not account for them. This was confirmed by his approaching me in a menacing manner, insolently demanding their return, and threatening me in a loud voice if I did not give them up, which I properly refused to do, and ordered a Sergeant who had come up to seize and buck-and-gag him. The Sergeant, against whom I shall appear later, did not obey my orders, but seemed to abet his companion's gross insubordination. The scene finally culminated, in the presence of a number of enlisted men, in the prisoner's wrenching the field-glasses away from me by main force, and would have struck me had not the Sergeant prevented this. It was such an act as in any other army in the world would have subjected the offender to instant execution. It was only possible in—" "Don't soft-soap me," the old woman snapped. "I'm too old for it and I'm too tough for it. I want to look at some facts, and I want you to look at them, too." She paused, and nobody said a word. "I want to start with a simple statement. We're in trouble." RE: Fruyling's World "MACDONALD'S GATE" "Read me some of it." "Well, I want something better than that." HoME大香蕉第一时间
ENTER NUMBET 0016www.fanyouxi.com.cn www.getpage.com.cn lbirti.com.cn www.fwoxxb.com.cn www.mtsjzs.org.cn www.n9n51.net.cn www.riywtf.com.cn rgecwi.com.cn moyushot.org.cn woobuy.com.cn
I was at Tate Modern (London’s modern art museum) over the weekend and saw IKB 79 – my first time encountering International Klein Blue in the flesh.
Description in the catalogue:
(There are other colours owned by artists including Vantablack, the blackest black, under exclusive license to Anish Kapoor; and PINK, the pinkest pink, by Stuart Semple which is available to any artist for $3.99 except Anish Kapoor: )
What I hadn’t expected about International Klein Blue:
IKB 79 is so large, and the blue is so deep. As I looked it filled my eyes and somehow, an illusion I guess, something happening in the retina, it saturated me, I stopped seeing it.
Instead after 30 seconds or so: I began to see a deep black together with IKB, both at once, behind it somehow. Beyond the blue, the void.
Yves Klein’s origin story (BBC):
Klein, the third man:
And, seeing International Klein Blue, I understand: it is the sky. Not so much in colour - though of course yes that too - but in a truer sense. Behind the sky there is the infinite depth, the darkness, the black of space.
Even the azure of the south of France, after the gazing up with the innocence of youth, after that, the reality of – well, everything.
Art!
ANYWAY: it’s hot in London.
The temperature today and tomorrow is forecast to hit 40C.
Here’s a list of the hottest day each year from 1900 in the UK. It’s never been 40C. It’s been 37C twice and 38C twice, that’s all.
Walking to the train station this morning, it was unnaturally quiet – people have been advised to stay home.
The birds sang. The trees are green and in full leaf. It’s summer. The heat.
The blue sky – threatens.
Hot days, blue skies, have changed since I was a kid, slowly. A mesofact.
It used to be that the blue sky was about bbq and the beach and hanging out in the forest with friends. Gorgeous days.
Now it’s that, but also the blue sky is sinister somehow.
Don’t you get that, just a little?
It’s a quiet reminder of the climate crisis. It’s not going to get cooler from here on out. This is a warning from the future: as I get older this will happen more regularly at first; then this will happen every summer. Wild burns and sea levels rising; fire and flood. The ghost of summers yet to come. A silent glance cloaked innocuously in a calm July sky; it’s blue right now with wisps of cloud. It’s always going to be there now, that feeling. I mean, I still enjoy it, it’s still a beautiful day, but.
An omen overhead.
It’s taken 30 years not 30 seconds but, same same, the black beyond the blue.