International Klein Blue: The Most Perfect Expression Of Blue

[The Good Captain]

Well, that's fantastic: painting at windmills.

 

If we look closely, we might discover Klein in Moby Dick.

 

As for the shirt, well, I'm a sucker for blue (Philip Hensher's criticisms notwithstanding). Writing with Diamine Sapphire at this very moment...

 

Good review! Thank you for alerting us to it. I was not familiar with this book. I particularly liked this part of the many interesting things you had to say: "Richardson encouraged her pupils to draw, doodle, colour in. She taught them the rhythms and gestures of writing, but she also made it fun: spontaneous, inventive, imaginative."

I am also writing today with Diamine Sapphire, I like is less well on Rhodia than on Fabriano EcoQua -- not sure why.

 

Thanks again!

 

I received a copy of 'The Missing Ink' for Christmas and it is a great book; full of wit and information. It goes a long way to help explain why so many people still persist in writing in the same styles as each other. And the geographical incidences of this phenomenon. Amongst other things of course. I've not finished it yet but no mention of Klein - yet!

[encre_sportive]

In my impression, Omas Blue is closer to IKB than any other blue fountain ink is.

[MCN]

Reviving a fun thread from the past: I have found the new Kobe #50 Kyomachi Legend Blue to be a closer match to my Ultramarine Blue pigment than any other ink I tried so it may be an ink to consider for comparing to IKB.

[ukobke]

MCN, it would be very easier if we would have a sample of Kobe Vermeer blue ink from Nagasawa and Kobe#50. The ink review below is not so helpful as to compare with IKB.

 

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/index.php/topic/273905-kobe-50-kyo-machi-legend-blue/

 

I still have the color/postcard from the museum. Every time I open my drawer with inks, IMO, BSB is the ink closer to IKB.

[Antenociticus]

This fascinating thread has been dormant a long time, but it was one of the reasons I recently upgraded from being a fountain pen user who occasionally came here for information to becoming a proper member of these forums.

 

Yves Klein and his work has been an interest of mine for a long time, and whatever else I could add to this thread – I'm no ink expert, though I do use it in both writing and art/design – there is one thing I firmly believe.

 

Klein would have hated fountain pens.

 

I think that is obvious from the following, the first three paragraphs of his 1958 essay, "My Position in the Battle Between Line and Color":

 

"For my part, the art of painting consists in liberating the first state of matter. Ordinary painting, painting as it is commonly understood, is a prison window whose lines, contours forms, and composition are all determined by bars. The lines concretize our mortality, our emotional life, our reason, and even our spirituality. They are our psychological boundaries, our historic past, our education, our skeletal framework; they are our weaknesses and our desires, our faculties and our contrivances.

"Color, on the other hand, is the natural and human measure; it bathes in a cosmic sensibility. The sensibility of a painter is unencumbered by mysterious nooks and crannies. Contrary to what the line tends to lead us to believe, it is like humidity in the air; color is sensibility become matter – matter in its first, primal state.

"I can no longer approve of a 'readable' painting; my eyes are made not to read a painting but, rather, to see it. Painting is COLOR, and Van Gogh proclaims, 'I long to be freed from I know not what horrible prison.' I believe that he unconsciously suffered from seeing color cut into pieces by lines and its consequences."

[rvisser]

Very interesting quotes from Klein. Thank you. I appreciate it. Though I wonder if he may not have used a fountain pen to write the words you quote. Letter forms are essentially lines.

 

And I wonder, too, if an artist like Agnes Martin, unquestionably one of the most spiritual of all artists, would agree with Klein. But she is not an ordinary painter, as commonly understood. In fact, despite Martin's extensive use of line, I think Klein would include her in his cosmic sensibility . . . and perhaps revise his comments, or at least qualify them somewhat more.

 

 

 

One time, I was coming out of the mountains, and having painted the mountains, I came out on this plain, and I thought, “Ah! What a relief!” (This was just outside of Tulsa.) I thought, “This is for me!” The expansiveness of it. I sort of surrendered. This plain … it was just like a straight line. It was a horizontal line. And I thought there wasn’t a line that affected me like a horizontal line. Then, I found that the more I drew that line, the happier I got. First I thought it was like the sea … then, I thought it was like singing! Well, I just went to town on this horizontal line. -Agnes Martin

 

See: https://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/03/31/agnes-martin-john-gruen-interview/

 

Thanks much for your thoughts. I appreciate them. Anyone else

[praxim]

Regarding Klein, I am not so impressed when new art says old art was not art.

[Torrilin]

I havent read Kleins full essay, but generally when a visual artist is discussing line, form and color and they are working after the development of photography, if it sounds like theyre saying old art isnt art that isnt what they mean.

 

A lot of art before photography is trying for photorealistic effects. They didnt HAVE photos, and accurate visual records mattered. And done badly (which a tremendous amount of all art was, because you just have to make bad art to make good art) photorealistic work can be very stiff and lifeless and bad at communicating. If you have access to photography and its the right tool for the job, USE IT. And dont blindly praise older art just because its old.

 

Sometimes tho photography wont communicate what you want to say. Or its very difficult to execute the right photo but its easy to draw or paint it. You want to have a bunch of tools in your toolbox and you want to use them to communicate effectively. Dont just rely on one thing and refuse to try and communicate.

 

And the other half is when Klein was writing, color photography existed, but the color reproduction was very dependent on the film stock you used and the development process. And most color photos lasted less than 10 years. So serious photographers shot black and white on average. There just werent many color options and mostly the good ones were brutal on the skill required and on the costs. And mostly artists like cheap materials because mostly artists are broke.

 

By contrast actual painting and good stable paint was comparatively cheap.

 

Hes not trying to be rude or devalue art. Just pointing out that yeah color does matter and that painting isnt useless.

 

(Havent looked at much of his stuff in person so I cant speak to anything else. But its actually a lot of fun to go to an art museum and really look at the art. Especially stuff you understand well enough to copy. You will be certain to find old and very well respected art that is hilariously bad. Its very encouraging on days where you feel like you cant do anything)

[ukobke]

@ rvisser : It is the best topic I ever participated thanks to you "rvisser". By the way, since you first brought this topic up, I ... found out "photoshop" for my photography needs and this might be helpful: https://www.colorhexa.com/002fa7

 

@ praxim Maybe Klein was talking about his first artwork... talking about old art.

 

@torrilin: Photography and Klein... very interesting!

Edited June 11, 2018 by ukobke

[rvisser]

Regarding Klein, I am not so impressed when new art says old art was not art.

 

Thanks, Praxim. I appreciate your comment.

 

Though I wonder if he really said that "old art is not art," or whether he was driving at something else. Perhaps he was saying that, if art as practiced in his own time, his contemporary art, "ordinary painting, painting as it is commonly understood," was readable in the conventional sense, he could no longer 'approve' of it. Perhaps he was arguing that painting now had new goals and new responsibilities. Each generation of artists has new problems to solve, and artists who cling to the past, merely replicating past achievements, may not be addressing these new and sometimes pressing goals and responsibilities. The work may be soothing and comfortable; it may be conventionally beautiful; but it may not give expression to the authentic tasks of this moment, this time and this place. Klein seems to be saying that, for him, one of the spiritual tasks of the artist of his time is related to the cosmic sensibility of color.

 

Thanks again for your comment.

[rvisser]

@ rvisser : It is the best topic I ever participated thanks to you "rvisser". By the way, since you first brought this topic up, I ... found out "photoshop" for my photography needs and this might be helpful: https://www.colorhexa.com/002fa7

 

@ praxim Maybe Klein was talking about his first artwork... talking about old art.

 

@torrilin: Photography and Klein... very interesting!

 

Thanks much for this link. This is most interesting:

 

In a RGB color space, hex #002fa7 (also known as International Klein Blue) is composed of 0% red, 18.4% green and 65.5% blue. Whereas in a CMYK color space, it is composed of 100% cyan, 71.9% magenta, 0% yellow and 34.5% black. It has a hue angle of 223.1 degrees, a saturation of 100% and a lightness of 32.7%. #002fa7 color hex could be obtained by blending #005eff with #00004f. Closest websafe color is: #003399.

Follow link for complete information.

[praxim]

No disagreement with new art, new perspectives, rvisser. My caution is applicable to more than that area anyway, where new standards dismissively judge old actions without consideration of context; whether the old action had a fair chance of being different at the time, or whether people then were making their own discoveries on which new are built. that is a bit of a digression from your theme so I will stop talking about it.

 

I first used Visconti Blue because it was generally regarded as closest to IKB, and now because I simply like it.

 

 

edit: more stuff.

Edited June 11, 2018 by praxim

[rvisser]

Well said. Thanks. I am going to try Visconti Blue. Best wishes to you.

[ukobke]

At #75 there is a template by Marcomillions with HBS values for a selection of blue inks.

 

Finally the IBK's HBS values are 223 , 100, 65.

 

I put IBK values in photoshop and compared them with the template of Marcomillions @ #75 of this threat.

 

Although the numbers show closer to some inks, the most close ink I saw is Baystate Blue to IBK.

[jmccarty3]

Many thanks to all who revived this thread. Lots of food for thought here about the evolution of art, especially vis a vis photography. The comparison between the two is necessarily oversimplified, but still worth studying. IKB continues to fascinate us, regardless of how it's used.

[grmbrk]

Sorry for the necropost, but I had to thank you all for this incredible thread.