The color of the sky, the sea, the ocean, our planet, a flower, a butterfly, sometimes a look, blue is an omnipresent primary color in our lives.
Deeply linked to art history for centuries, but also to the sacred, royalty, fashion and decoration, blue has always held a special place. In Feng Shui philosophy, it is the color of the soul and wisdom, representing tranquility and encouraging reflection and meditation.
In the 12th century, blue pigments were expensive because they were made from lapis lazuli, which was then worth as much as gold. The Catholic religion decided to associate blue with divine purity, and thus with the Virgin Mary. Paintings, stained-glass windows and altarpieces were adorned with these precious pigments, revealing the Madonna beneath an azure veil.
We can't help but continue the story with the following anecdote: there's a tradition of dressing little girls who come into the world in blue. Little boys, on the other hand, are dressed in pink, which is in fact a pale red, a symbol of virility. It wasn't until the 60s that blue and pink were switched between the sexes. The arrival of the Barbie doll gave little girls a pink color they still struggle to shake off today. Blue was then ceded to boys, and the entire toy market was divided into two distinct colors. But that's another story, another debate, and perhaps one day another exhibition!
Let's return to art, and more specifically to contemporary art. Blue has inspired so many painters, including Monet, Chagall, Kandinsky, Klein and many others. Probably because it evokes the sky and the sea, blue is given a celestial resonance, a connection with the divine and everything to do with dreams, the spiritual and the infinite.
"Blue is essentially a celestial color. The ultimate sensation it creates is that of rest. Vassily Kandinsky
"Blue has no dimension, it's out of dimension, whereas the other colors do [...] All colors lead to concrete associations of ideas [...] whereas blue reminds us at most of the sea and the sky, the most abstract things in tangible, visible nature". Yves Klein
La Galerie Le Container unveils all its blue works for a weekend, offering an artistic plunge into the color of timelessness.
