International Klein Blue

Quinn: Hello and welcome back to Pictorial on Relay FM. I’m Quinn Rose and I didn't go to art school, but I still love learning about art from the very broad to the very specific.

Betty: Hi, and I'm Betty. I am also someone who did not go to art school, but I also love learning about art. Today will be a very specific topic and you guys will find out just how specific we can get.

Quinn: But before we get into today's very fun episode, we want to take a minute to talk to you all about Relay FM's podcastathon for St. Jude. So as you might know, September is childhood cancer awareness month. And for the third year in a row, Relay FM is supporting the saving mission of St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital. Their mission is to defeat childhood cancer and as part of that mission, every single family who goes to St. Jude does not pay a cent for their life-saving treatment, their travel, their food. Their philosophy is that if your child has cancer, all you should have to focus on is them and their health. And so they take care of everything else, which unfortunately in the United States is a rarity for healthcare here and it cannot be overstated how amazing that is.

Betty: So they've been treating childhood cancer for almost 60 years. And over this time they actually helped to push childhood cancer survival rates from 20% to more than 80% as of this point. However, this actually does still mean that one in five children do not survive cancer and St. Jude's mission is to get to a point where no child dies from cancer, but obviously they can't get there without our support.

Quinn: So to help support paying for the treatments, these amazing life-saving treatments, as well as developing groundbreaking research towards pushing that survival rate higher for each child, Relay FM is once again partnering with them. And there's lots of really fun stuff going on this year to go along with this fundraising effort. This is going on right now. If you're listening to this when this is coming out, the campaign is on. So you can go to st.jude.org/relay. A couple of things that I want to specifically shout out here. If you give over a hundred dollars in a single donation, you're going to receive the Relay FM stickers of thanks pack at the end of the campaign, which is very fun. And of course, the flagship event of the network is on September 17th, there is the Relay FM podcastathon. So that is going to be from 12:00 PM through 8:00 PM Eastern time. That’s at twitch.tv/relayfm. It'll be hosted once again by Myke Hurley and Stephen Hackett, who are the co-founders of Relay FM, featuring tons and tons of other Relay FM hosts and guests, as we talk about lots of different topics, play games, do silly stunts. Last year, Myke created an entire like balloon castle in his office. Lots of weird stuff happens. And it is really not to be missed. The last few campaigns for St. Jude have been incredibly successful. And this year, once we hit the, it’s about $196,000 raised this year, that means that the Relay FM community will have raised a million dollars over the course of three years for St. Jude, which I can't even imagine how far that money is going.

Betty: Yeah, it was, it was a lot of fun actually being a part of the podcastathon last year. I won a game show and it was great. And last year we actually did raise $456,000. So I know the goal this year is to raise a third of a million, but I think we should do our best to push ourselves as far beyond that as possible.

Quinn: I think we can beat last year, with your help. So go to st.jude.org/relay, where you can check out the other sort of milestones and goals for this year. And of course donate. Alright, now onto the main episode. And I'm just going to hand this right over to you, Betty, take it away.

Betty: So Quinn, if you'll remember quite a while ago, this was close to when we first started the podcast, it was actually episode 11. We talked about squares. And this was actually in April of 2020. Do you remember, do you recall that episode?

Quinn: I do recall that episode. I believe that we spend the entire time talking about why we like the concept of squares in art. And it was really weird and perhaps no one cared except for us, but we had fun. And that's what counts.

Betty: Exactly. This might be another one of those episodes. But we'll find out. But I think I do remember towards the end of that episode, you had said something along the lines of, wow. Like we're only on episode 11 and we're already talking about one specific shape, maybe one day, we're just going to be talking about one shade of a particular color.

Quinn: Oh, ha ha ha. So funny. We would never do that. 

Betty: And that's exactly what we're going to do today. But I swear there is more than just, hey, this is a color. It looks nice. Or at least I hope I can get some additional concepts across. 

Quinn: I have so many questions and you haven't even told me a single thing yet. But I guess first question right off the bat, is it like a color that I would see in my day-to-day life that you're going to tell me more about? Or is it one of those like lab created colors that's like blacker than black or one of those things?

Betty: You know what? The answer is yes, to all of them, perhaps.

Quinn: Oh, no.

Betty: Honestly color’s a very complex topic and we could talk about all kinds of things related to like color theory and science and things like that, but just today, because I'm talking about this specific color, I'm going to actually give you, and also put in the show notes for our listeners, what exactly this color is. So the first link I have there is a link to basically the definition of this color. It is called International Klein Blue and on this website, you're going to see like how it's defined in different color spaces. Like if you're viewing in RGB or CMYK or hex color, I'm not going to really get into these like color definitions, but basically these are representations of colors in specific situations, like whether it's on computer screen or in printing or in like manufacturing, basically this is a specific color of blue. It's got a specific hue and tint and brightness that it, like, we're not just talking about like a generic blue, which could be like any, like, it could be light blue or sky blue, or, you know, sea greenish blue. This is a very specific blue color that actually has very detailed definitions of what it's supposed to be.

Quinn: Although I will say there's also just a little line that says “color description: dark blue,” and it's, you know what, they're right. It's a dark blue.

Betty: Yeah. So basically what it is—actually Quinn, if you want to, so in addition to dark blue, is there any, are there any other attributes that you would qualify this color with?

Quinn: What a wild question. I do, I do understand there's lots of ways to describe color. Am I going to be the best at it? No. But I will say besides just saying that it's dark blue, I would say, first of all, it's very pretty, I like this color. I like a lot of blues and I would say this is a very nice shade of blue. It seems like a very kind of, almost like deep shade of blue. Like, it feels very rich in a way. I don't know if any of these are technical terms, but that's sort of the vibe that I get from it. It looks like the kind of dark blue that would be on like royal clothes. You know, it's got that kind of like, this is a very expensive dye kind of vibe to it.

Betty: You know what? I'm so glad you said that because you actually are alluding to some of the things I'm going to talk about when it comes to this color. So yes, and I do love the way you described it. Like it's a very rich blue, like on the website that we have, so its technical RGB definition is 0% red, 18.4% green, 65.5% blue.

Quinn: Wait a second.

Betty: So I know like, but there, there is a, this is just the way it's defined in RGB, like, which is one way of defining color. And it's usually used for like digital monitors. But when it comes to like CMYK, which is usually what's used in printing, it's actually 100% cyan, 71.9% magenta, 0% yellow and 34.5% black.

Quinn: That’s a lot of magenta. That's more magenta that I would've expected, I guess.

Betty: Yeah, exactly. So what matters really is it comes out as like a blue color that looks like to me, it looks very pure. Like it doesn't it like, it doesn't seem like there's, it has like reds and greens, even though, obviously in some printing and display processes, there will be green that is a part of it. Like what we, I just mentioned. But yeah, it is very like pure and rich and that’s like kind of, that's what this blue is, but I'll get into why I'm talking about it. What I'll say is this color is very famous and very well known and the historic reason is this is the color of what's called ultramarine blue. If you have seen a lot of Renaissance art, you would know it as the color that's traditionally used on like clothing and fabric—and this goes back to what you were saying, Quinn, earlier about like, it feels like it's like a royal color, a color you would see on like royal clothing, and you are correct because ultramarine blue originally comes from this rock called lapis lazuli. It's a deep blue metamorphic rock and it's, this rock does exist all over the world, but the place with the most abundant amount of this rock is actually in various mines in Afghanistan. And for centuries, it was the only place to get lapis lazuli. And it was the only place where Europeans would have imported this, this pigment from. So it was a very expensive and very rare rock because it is—was only found in this one place across the sea and it had to be imported. Because of that, artists, they weren't just going to use this really expensive paint everywhere. So it's very often reserved for really special circumstances and it just so happened it became a trend in the, during the Renaissance that this color is only used on the Virgin Mary or sometimes baby Jesus.

Quinn: Oh, interesting.

Betty: So if you click on, I think the second and the third link I have dropped in the show notes right now, these are a couple of examples of its usage. So the first one is a painting by the Renaissance artist Masaccio and it's called Madonna and Child, which is basically, it's a very much replicated pose and painting of the Virgin Mary holding Jesus. And you'll see that the Virgin Mary, like her cloak in this deep blue color. And then the second painting is one is a story from Jesus's crucifixion, it’s when he's carrying the cross on his back. And you'll see, there's lots of people, but for art historians, it's very easy to identify which one is the Virgin Mary, because you will see, she is the one that’s extending her arms out to to Jesus and she's the one in that deep blue color as well. So it kind of got associated with the Virgin Mary and sometimes baby Jesus. So this color got us became associated with like something very important, very holy and reserved for the most special characters in history. But the thing you'll notice actually about these paintings is even though the color we looked at earlier on this page that has the description for it. The thing is actually what you see on the computer screen and what I see it probably actually, isn't true to what this color is supposed to look like in real life because different computer monitors are adjusted to, like they're adjusted differently. And also most computer screens and most printing processes actually can't reflect the vibrancy of this color. So like when you see this color in real life, it is much brighter, much more saturated, and just much more intense than what we can even see on like on a computer screen right now, basically.

Quinn: This color today, this true color still created from that same mineral?

Betty: That’s a really good question. So it probably isn’t. There probably still are places that like actually do create the authentic ultramarine blue from that lapis lazuli rock. But I think it was in the 1830s, there were these French chemists who actually developed a synthetic way of manufacturing the same blue, or pretty much the same blue. And these days it's most likely all synthetic, and the actual, like chemical process is comp—it’s too complicated for us to explain, but basically it involves like heating up these chemicals to like a certain temperature to achieve this color. But yeah, these days it's probably synthetic.

Quinn: Interesting. Okay.

Betty: But one thing you will probably notice in these two pictures that I just showed you as examples of Mary having the blue color is_the way color and pigments work with typically in traditional painting, especially oil painting, is a color actually over time and it becomes, or it dulls and darkens over time. Like, cause the question some people might be like, if this color is so rich, why are these examples from the Renaissance seemed like a really dark de-saturated blue. And it's not just because our computer screen can't reflect the exact color on the painting. If you see some of these old Renaissance paintings in real life, the color on the Virgin Mary's robe would actually be desaturated from what it would've looked like when like Raphael and Masaccio painted it like 500 years ago. I'll explain why I mentioned this in a moment. Yeah, so like, just keep in mind that the way these colors are painted in oil paintings and other paintings result in it darkening and deepening over time. And that's mostly because, so the way the paint is made is that the rock is ground or, or the synthetic chemical was ground into a powder and it's mixed with a binder, which it depends on the type of painting, depends on the type of paint you're using. Like it traditionally for tempura would have been like egg yolk, and then for oils would have been like oil. And for like acrylic, it would be like mixed with like acrylic resins and binders, because that's what creates like the sticky part of the paint, so it actually sticks to the canvas. And the reason color dulls over time is always because of the binder. Like the binding agent is what causes the chemical or is what causes the color to change over, over the period of history. Now that I mentioned that, I'm going to talk about why this color is called the International Klein Blue and why it’s not called ultramarine blue. There was this artist who was born in 1928 and practiced art, or practiced painting in the 1940s and 50s. And his name is Yves Klein. He's a French artist who's most well known to be associated with this group called the Nouveau Realist, or New Realist. And he is basically one of these people who paints squares and rectangles.

Quinn: Nice.

Betty: So we did talk about in the squares episode that, yeah, like in the 1950s and 60s, a lot of artists were painting like in abstract ways and were going like much more and more minimalists. And, you know, were just painting these like squares of solid color. And he was doing that along with a lot of these other people, but what makes him interesting and different is he is often credited as the person who invented a new color.

Quinn: Hmm. Okay.

Betty: This is not necessarily true, but I'll explain why people like associate this with him. But basically he was obsessed with ultramarine blue. Like he thought this was a really beautiful color. And he even had like, for himself, he had some like spiritual connections with it. And he wrote, he had a lot of writings where he also wrote about just like how much beauty this color has. But the thing that is different is that, so in 1954, he started to work with this paint maker called Edward Adam. He wanted to, he basically wanted to perfect this color and what he means by that is he wanted to find a way to paint this color, but not have it degrade over time and like not have it deepen and dark, get dark over time because, you know, he noticed that with historic paintings. So then apparently in 1956, I couldn't find like how exactly you found this, but maybe he was just, had a lot of connections or, or was asking around, somehow he came across this synthetic resin called Rhodopas M60A, which apparently is just this chemical that's used by a French pharmaceutical company. It has nothing to do with art or paint making. He just decided to get the paint maker, Edward Adam, to use this synthetic pharmaceutical chemical and mix it with this, the traditional ultramarine blue, and somehow it worked and they basically made ultramarine blue that retains its purity and its color over time.

Quinn: How many random chemicals do you think they tried before they found this one?

Betty: I don't know. And so the thing is I’m going to skip ahead a little bit, but I'll come back to like later to talk about like the rest of Yves Klein's life and art accomplishments, but he actually unfortunately died at age of, at age 34 of a heart attack. It’s quite sad. He had a pretty short life and short career, but I did read online there's a lot of theories that people think he died because he was experimenting with so many deadly toxic chemicals. Or like at least it contributed to his like poor health condition that led to him dying so young. But again, this is not like confirmed. This is just kind of a theory, but it would make sense because he was obsessed with, you know, making this paint and he was willing to try all kinds of toxic chemicals in order to get that accomplished.

Quinn: Oh God. Yeah. I mean, that's so sad. And, but also like that does sound likely, just because it is a lots of stories throughout history of like, oh, this scientist who like worked with these groundbreaking materials and they died young because they were radiating themselves because they didn't know yet. And like, oh, now we know.

Betty: Yeah, exactly. And so, yeah, it is interesting. Cause he kind of is like one of these people, except his goal was just, I want to create this color, or I want to create a form of this color that can just be as pure for as long as there's time. And like, it just seemed like his goal was just to perfect this color. And so once he actually got this process perfected with the paint maker, he registered a patent for this color in 1957. And so the patent isn't like, you can't actually patent the color. The patent is for the chemical process of like producing the combination of the pigment and the colorless binder. And to this day, this color can still only be produced by that same paint manufacturer. So they, so they still exist and you can still order it from them. And it is supposedly still the exact same process that they developed back in 1954. And technically if you, like if you bought, if some other paint manufacturer says they have International Klein Blue, theoretically, it is not the same blue, cause they still have the patent basically for this particular process.

Quinn: Wow. That is fascinating. 

Betty: So yeah, what happened was after he perfected this he just went and he only used this color.

Quinn: I mean, if I had invented something like that, I would also exclusively, I would exclusively use that color. I would exclusively wear that color. Everyone would know. 

Betty: Yeah, exactly. Like he just, he became associated with this color and so in 1957, he held a show where he displayed 11 of these solid blue paintings and they look pretty much exactly the same. And he actually not only held an exhibition of just a bunch of blue rectangles, he actually priced them all differently and managed to sell them all.

Quinn: Incredible. Sliding scale of rectangles.

Betty: Yeah. Over his life he actually ended up making 194 of these blue paintings. They're not all exactly the same. Some of his earlier ones have like uneven surfaces and like, you can see texture and breaststroke, but then over time it became more just solid blue and these paintings, a lot of them still exist in like, or a lot of them are still in collections around the world like in places like the Tate, they have some of his pure blue paintings and I'm sure in like certain private collections. And he just purely painted in this color. And now a lot of people are probably going to be like, wow, like this is so not interesting [laughs], because it's just like it's some pretentious guy who's painting in just rectangles, but what is even more hilarious is that in 1958, he actually held another exhibition called The Void where he actually just had an empty room of nothing and he had 3000 people show up.

Quinn: Wow. That's fascinating.

Betty: And I think the context for this is he did, he did actually cite Marcel Duchamp as one of his influences and Marcel Duchamp—I believe we have mentioned a few times before is the person who, the artist who passed like a urinal off as a work of art. So clearly, like, I think Klein was, he kind of wanted to, he wanted to play with the art world, basically. Like he wanted to like kind of show, like how far he can push, like people and art collectors and the art world to consider what is art and in a way he was kind of successful.

Quinn: He got 3000 people to show up for an empty room. It certainly sounds like it was successful. And he now has this color named after him. I now understand what you meant when you said at the beginning that this is both like a natural color and artificially created color, which is so interesting. But yeah. So if you use this color, but it's manufactured in a different way, is it still called ultramarine?

Betty: Yeah, it would still be called ultramarine. Cause as far as I know, like no one has the ability to actually just own like that exact color because I mean, you can, you can trademark a color, but we won't get into that. But in terms of actually producing the color, the ultramarine, it can be produced by like basically anyone, but as far as I know this particular way of production with that type of binder that doesn't have the color degrade over time. This is the only, or at least the company claims that this is the only process where it can be achieved.

Quinn: I suppose time will prove them correct or incorrect. 

Betty: Yeah, that’s true. And then, but the, the other thing with this color, and the reason why I mentioned that it's kind of like a famous color is that it's not just the fact that he managed to sell like a lot of these paintings for a lot of money when it's just, you know, one color. It actually has led to a lot of cultural inspirations and it is a part of, kind of like popular culture. And so some examples are there's actually an Australian rock band called Yves Klein Blue. And apparently the Blue Man Group, the color that they use is International Klein Blue.

Quinn: Oh, that totally makes sense.

Betty: Yeah. So, and it's like, if you follow fashion, a lot of fashion designers use that color. Fashion designers like Giorgio Armani, and there's a fashion designer called Velaria McCulloch who not only designs with International Klein Blue, apparently she only wears International Klein Blue, like her shirts, jackets, purses, accessories. Like this is the only color she—I guess maybe publicly wears. I don't know what she wears like at home, but maybe she also only wears this color at home. And through my research, I found that apparently the Academy Award winning actor Eddie Redmayne, he actually wrote an entire paper about this color when—he actually has a degree in art history and he reveals that he's actually colorblind. And the reason he was so interested in this color was that this was one of the few colors that he can see. Like he can see the vibrancy of, compared to pretty much, most other colors.

Quinn: Oh my God, wait. That's so funny because when I was looking at the first link that you sent me where it has all this kind of technical information about the color, I scrolled down to the bottom and there's a colorblindness simulator. And I was like, oh, not in all of them, but like in a lot of types of color blindness, the color is still very similar. And like, honestly, just my eyes, like, I'm sure there's technical differences, but my eyes can't even really pick up the difference between the quote unquote like true color and what I'm seeing under the colorblindness simulators. So it's so funny that that actually came up.

Betty: Yeah. I mean, yeah, we haven't even gone into like, talking about color is experienced differently, not just on like different computer screens and printing process, it’s experienced differently by different people cause different people's eyes work differently and there's different types of colorblindness. But I think one of the reasons why so many people are attracted to this particular color is because it's so intense that even people, like most people who have colorblindness can like pick up this color more easily than any other color.

Quinn: That is amazing.

Betty: Yeah. What do you think Quinn? What do you think of this color and this history?

Quinn: Honestly, it's a really great color. And although now that you're talking about these examples and all of this stuff, like, I can see like I had seen this color before, like some of the stuff that you're talking about, like definitely rings a bell and like all that good stuff, but it's so cool to actually learn the history about it. And now I feel like every time I see it, I'm going to be like, I know the name of that color. Which is very fun. Now as we wrap up here, we want to take just a minute to tell you about another show on Relay FM that you might like, and that is Automators. Automators is a podcast about automating all of those little things in your life that you have to do over and over again. And that's time that you could get back by automating that. If you want your devices to do more for you, you should listen to David Sparks and Rosemary Orchard who are both incredibly smart and know truly so much about automation. Like I've never known about anything as much as these people know about automations. They cover a huge number of programs, apps, and just ways that you could automate various things in your life.

Betty: Yeah. As I think I mentioned in a few episodes ago, I am someone who's very interested in becoming a robot [laughs] and a part of being a robot is knowing how to automate. And so yeah, actually you can check out some great episodes like Automated Communications, which covers how you can automate the ways you communicate with other people. And then there's Widget Homescreen Nerdery, which is something that I'm very into these days. I just started putting widgets on my phone and, you know, I want to, I want to find more ways to automate my life so that eventually I will just be an automated human. 

Quinn: Perfect. You can find that at relay.fm/automators, or of course in your podcast player of choice. And you can find our show notes at relay.fm/pictorial. You can also find us on Twitter or Instagram @pictorialpod, and you can find me on Instagram @aspiringrobotfm.

Betty: And you can find me on Twitter or Instagram at articulationsv. And you can also find me on YouTube as ARTiculations and speaking of YouTube, we also have a YouTube channel Pictorial Podcasts where you can see a visual version of our podcast, usually released a few weeks after our audio version. For this one, it will probably just be the color blue over and over again, but it's still nice to look at.

Quinn: Who doesn't want that? Thanks for listening, art enthusiasts.