THE BLUER SHADE OF BLUE
„Musically, the light shade of blue could be compared to the sound of flute, and the dark one to the viola; by darkening it even more we get the marvelous tones of cello; wonderful, deep shades of blue remind me of the low sound of organ.”1
Wassily Kandinsky
Concerning the Spiritual in Art
Last month my Russian acquaintance sent me some information about Willy Melnikov. When he used to serve as a soldier in Afghanistan (back in the times of the Soviet regime) he came under fire and sustained injuries which resulted in his enigmatic ability to learn foreign languages. Among one hundred languages he mastered (namely these which he uses for writing his poetry) there is a Papuan language, tangma, in which there are only two words to describe colours: muli (black/green) and mola (white/red/yellow).
I guess that the editors of “-grafia” would find it quite problematic to translate into Papuan their last issue, entirely devoted to the colour blue and all its connotations. Asking would this issue find readers in that part of the world is, obviously, futile as it could possibly end up in diffusing such kind of music which would illustrate the lacking colour. It would probably lead to situations where people wanting to call something ‘blue’ would have to play it on a harmonica…
Let’s start the review of the most interesting articles. Painter Marek Sikorski in the interview entitled Anatomia chmur (The Anatomy of Clouds) tells us about the precision, regularity and discipline that are necessary when paragliding. He defines flying as ‘a different state if mind’ which can’t be actually described by words. Flying into a cloud is a rather unpleasant experience for a paraglider as it leads to losing one’s orientation and problems with maintaining a position. ‘A paraglider’s nightmare is being sucked in by a cumulonimbus’ says Ewa Wiśniewska-Cieślewicz, for whom the bad dream came true. She miraculously avoided death and inside the cloud, where temperature dropped to –50 degrees, she saw lumps of ice the size of oranges. The motif of clouds had been present in Sikorski’s life long before it appeared in his paintings. After taking hundred of photos, he decided to start painting clouds for real and made several paintings of ‘anatomical clouds’ which were purely technical experiments. For Sikorski El Greco is a real example of clouds’ interpreter, who understood the nature of this phenomenon as well as was the first artist to show the vertical movement of air. Before his times only the horizontal wind that pushes the clouds used to be painted, which was as obvious for the Renaissance people as for our children the fact that hedgehogs eat apples (this by the way often leads to accidental starvation of these carnivorous animals). In Sikorski’s art horizon line is often limited only by the edge of canvas as, according to the artist, searching for the horizon is a psychological, not artistical, human tendency. While flying we follow the clouds being at the same time restrained by the ‘earth’s horizon’. In painting, as well as in life, being aware of one’s limitations tends to be crucial.
Let’s proceed to the remaining parts of “-grafia”. Yves Klein (after Le vrai deviant réalité) patented his own colour ‘International Klein Blue’, which actually was a synthetic version of the 19th century’s ultramarine. The artist himself used to say that by this he wants to leave his mark. Apart from the colour he also left some philosophically polished up paintings. He used to eagerly invite models to his empty studio as he was afraid of the ‘marvelous, blue void’. He was the most interested in his models’ thighs and torsos, considering shoulders, arms and the head as unimportant since they were responsible for thinking. Klein was fascinated by the processes that can’t be consciously controlled by people, like digesting, beating of the heart or breathing. He cultivated health at the same time impersonating the Christian who believed in the resurrection of the body. At the beginning the models used to laugh at the reflection of their bodies in the pictures, however, later they decided to help the artist. They started rolling about in the paint and then on canvas becoming living paintbrushes. Klein’s works started to sort of making themselves and he didn’t have to even stain the tips of his fingers (he proved to be quite right since, as my befriended artist told me, ‘you shouldn’t paint in gloves just as you shouldn’t love in gloves’). Klein together with his models took part in the scientific telekinesis. Once, he exposed the canvas to spring rain in order to capture it as a sign of this atmospheric phenomenon. The painter also used to say that he could easily do without the colour as the sweat of his models mixed with dust, resin, blood and soil would be enough to work with. In the times of kitsch and tastelessness his monochromatic works couldn’t have met with loud and warm reception and, since he was aware of this, he decided to become a minister of silence.
In the interview Pielgrzymi u Świetego Półkonia (Pilgrims at the Saint Halfhorse) Olaf Cirut and Franciszek Starowieyski discuss ‘the ugliest Polish government since Łokietek’s times’ and the fact that ‘ugly people create ugly things’ such as architecture, landscape and clothes. Allow me to paraphrase one Dostoevsky’s sentence:’ People are good and beautiful when everything else is good and beautiful.’ Starowieyski is appalled by Kaczyński’s authoritarian language and he grieves that the Polish head of state, unlike the ancients or French presidents (Georges Pompidou, François Mitterrand or Jacques Chirac), is not even trying to leave any cultural heritage. Starowieyski perceives himself as the artist boycotted by museums and art galleries. Also, according to Art&Business, he is among the worst ten artists. The graphic describes his own art: ‘I really like making children but I really don’t like them’ meaning that he wants other people to have his works at home, therefore, he gets rid of these from his own one.
From the article Światło pod farbą (The light under paint) by Janusz Wałek we learn that in the 19th century the background of the famous Leonardo da Vinci’s painting Lady with an Ermine was repainted from blue into dense black. In the 15th century the picture was entirely innovative as far as its chiaroscuro effects and en trois quatre presentation of the model. The painting presents Prince Lodovic Sforza’s favorite, Cecilia Gallerani, once known for her wit and intelligence. The ermine was supposed to symbolize the Gallerani family (since ‘ermine’ translates into Greek as ‘gale’) as well as the chastity of the young lady. Janusz Wałek describes this piece of art with the amazing precision of an art historian, however, I am just mentioning it as an anecdote.
I think that the idea of “-grafia” editors to devote the whole issue to one colour was a brilliant one. It allows organizing all the articles around one particular topic, just like entries in a specialized lexicon where under the label ‘blue’ we are able to find not only the things that may be interesting for us but also photos and tagged shades of blue, navy blue, cobalt, indigo, ultramarine, aquamarine, lapis lazuli, ceruleum and Prussian blue.
1Each quotation appearing in the article has been translated on my own – MK
Magdalena Galas
Translated by Małgorzata Kwiatkowska
Discussed journals: -grafia