Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Blue: Cobalt to Cerulean in Art and Culture
    Blue: Cobalt to Cerulean in Art and Culture
    Blue: Cobalt to Cerulean in Art and Culture
    Ebook280 pages1 hour

    Blue: Cobalt to Cerulean in Art and Culture

    By Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Blue, the world's favorite color, is elegantly showcased in more than 200 artworks from the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Representing a diversity of movements, cultures, and media that spans the ages and the globe, the objects in Blue range from ancient Egyptian jewelry and traditional Japanese prints to Impressionist paintings and indigo-dyed textiles. Short essays from museum curators on the significance and symbolism of the color at various times and places provide historical context for this visual feast. With page edges dyed blue, this distinctive volume is a bijou treasure.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherChronicle Books Digital
    Release dateApr 28, 2015
    ISBN9781452139340
    Blue: Cobalt to Cerulean in Art and Culture
    Author

    Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

    The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is one of the most comprehensive art museums in the world.

    Related to Blue

    Related ebooks

    Art For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      No/20 Art Of The Home

      Jun 3, 2019

      No/20 Art Of The Home
      1 min read

    • Article

      Dream Weavers

      Jan 5, 2022

      Dream Weavers
      4 min read

    • Article

      Explore Your Mix Of Media

      Jun 11, 2021

      Explore Your Mix Of Media
      5 min read

    • Article

      Couture Almighty

      Oct 24, 2021

      Couture Almighty
      4 min read

    • Article

      1. LINES AND shapes

      Jul 12, 2019

      1. LINES AND shapes
      3 min read

    • Article

      The New School

      Oct 1, 2021

      The New School
      6 min read

    • Article

      A Charmed Life

      Oct 17, 2021

      A Charmed Life
      4 min read

    • Article

      Artscape

      Jul 13, 2022

      Artscape
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Munsell Colour System

      May 15, 2020

      The Munsell Colour System
      1 min read

    • Article

      Two views: Japanese Kōgei

      Aug 1, 2017

      Two views: Japanese Kōgei
      3 min read

    • Article

      In Perspective

      Oct 1, 2022

      In Perspective
      21 min read

    • Article

      Mentors

      Sep 9, 2021

      Mentors
      1 min read

    • Article

      The ART Of FASHION

      Nov 23, 2021

      The English couturier Charles Frederick Worth—preferred designer of Empress Eugénie—revolutionized the dress code of high society with one bold gesture, radical and innovative, subtle and of extreme simplicity. By placing his name, Worth, on the late

      4 min read

    • Article

      Desert Dweller

      Mar 1, 2020

      Desert Dweller
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Evolution Of Writing

      Jun 20, 2019

      The Evolution Of Writing
      3 min read

    • Article

      Waiting for Godot

      Jun 1, 2019

      Waiting for Godot
      7 min read

    • Article

      In Search of Modernity

      Jun 1, 2022

      In Search of Modernity
      4 min read

    • Article

      Jessamyn Plotts

      Sep 5, 2023

      Jessamyn Plotts
      1 min read

    • Article

      Semi Formica

      Aug 13, 2021

      Semi Formica
      12 min read

    • Article

      Contemporary Ceramics And The Past

      Aug 1, 2018

      Contemporary Ceramics And The Past
      7 min read

    • Article

      Exhibitions

      Sep 3, 2021

      Exhibitions
      1 min read

    • Article

      How Not to Be Forgotten

      May 1, 2019

      How Not to Be Forgotten
      8 min read

    • Article

      MASTERS At Work

      Dec 24, 2020

      MASTERS At Work
      8 min read

    • Article

      Ode to Gray

      Aug 21, 2018

      Ode to Gray
      5 min read

    • Article

      African American Quilts

      Oct 1, 2020

      African American Quilts
      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Blue

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Blue - Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

      EGYPTIAN Eye of Horus (Wedjat) Ring, 1539–1295/1292 BC

      FRENCH Platter from the Louis XV Service, 1754–55

      EGYPTIAN Broad Collar, 2551–2528 BC

      JOOS VAN CLEVE The Crucifixion, ca. 1525

      CHARLES SHEELER Three White Tulips, 1912

      EGYPTIAN Ibex Finial, 1550–1295 BC

      EGYPTIAN Model Throw Stick, 1400–1390 BC

      SOUTH SEA ISLANDS Bark Cloth, 19th century

      ROMAN Ribbed Bowl, late 1st century BC–AD 1st century

      DUTCH Pair of Tulip Vases as Triumphal Arches, ca. 1690

      DUTCH "Kraak" Plate, late 17th century

      LÉON NIKOLAIEVITCH BAKST The High Priest (Costume Design for Dieu Bleu), 1911

      UTAGAWA HIROSHIGE Bird and Loquat, ca. 1830–44

      Text copyright © 2015 by the individual writers.

      Compilation and photography copyright © 2015 by The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

      ISBN: 978–1–4521–3934–0 (mobi, epub)

      ISBN: 978–1–4521–4924–0 (epub3)

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available.

      ISBN: 978–1–4521–2940–2 (hc)

      Design and typesetting by Annabelle Gould

      Typeset with Arnhem, Egyptian, Brandon Grotesque, and Stag Stencil

      Chronicle Books LLC

      680 Second Street

      San Francisco, CA 94107

      www.chroniclebooks.com

      16

      Introduction: Blue Notes

      by Adam Tessier

      28

      The Significance of Blue in Ancient Egyptian Art

      by Denise Doxey

      42

      Egyptian Blue and Egyptian Faience

      by Pamela Hatchfield

      58

      Indigo

      by Pamela Parmal

      72

      The Brilliant Kingfisher

      by Yvonne Markowitz

      86

      Porcelaneous Blue: The Blue-and-White Tradition in Chinese Porcelain

      by Nancy Berliner

      100

      The Rise of Blue in Europe

      by Rhona MacBeth

      114

      A Blue Plate Special: Five Centuries of Blue in European Ceramics, 1500 to Today

      by Thomas Michie

      130

      The Blues of the Japanese Landscape: Hokusai’s Prints of Mount Fuji

      by Sarah Thompson

      144

      Cyanotype Photography

      by Anne E. Havinga

      158

      The Blues

      by Caroline Cole

      174

      Captions

      Introduction: Blue Notes

      Adam Tessier

      Head of Interpretation

      EVERYONE LOVES BLUE. Four in ten people would tell you it’s their favorite color. To be fair, though, four in ten people will also say the cashew is their favorite nut. That same percentage of adults still reads actual newspapers, and an equal number believes ghosts are real. So for a moment, let’s set aside the fact that you and I and about 40 percent of everyone we know prefer blue over any other color. Instead let’s wonder: What does that preference reveal about us? What does blue say about us? In the pages that follow, images from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and essays by ten of the museum’s curators and conservators explore that question, providing a rich (and colorful) context for humankind’s fascination with blue across thousands of years of art making and cultural history.

      Make a list of everything blue, a stream of blue consciousness. Mine would begin: Picasso’s Blue Period. Joni Mitchell’s album Blue, with its cyan sleeve. Miles Davis, Kind of Blue. My favorite blue oxford-cloth shirt. The perfect blue jeans. Elvis and his blue suede shoes. The deep blue of the bull-leaping fresco at Knossos, or better, the brilliant blue backdrop of Babylon’s Ishtar Gate. The blue glass in the windows at Chartres. The Hope Diamond. Tiffany’s little blue box. Sapphires. Smurfs. Thomas Gainsborough’s Blue Boy. Cornflowers. Blue jays. Blue books for exams, and blue pens. French chore smocks, called bleu de travail, work blue. My mother’s Blue Willow plates, the pattern rubbed off at the edges. And above all, the sky, and then also the sea.

      Or to the ancient Egyptians, the sky and the Nile, and by extension the gods who ruled those realms. As blues go, the Egyptians famously invented two: Egyptian faience, a glassy blue ceramic, and so-called Egyptian blue, the first synthetic pigment ever made. But their most precious blue came from the faraway mines of Afghanistan, in the form of the rock lapis lazuli. Ground to powder, lapis becomes ultramarine, at one point the costliest pigment in existence—a luxury rarer even than gold. Renaissance painters reserved it for only the most special applications, like the painted robes of the Virgin, a blue proper for the queen of heaven. A true blue. Which brings us to the medieval fabric that gave rise to that phrase: the blue cloth dyed at Coventry, England, and whose color did not fade.

      For a while, everyone wanted that blue Coventry wool. Green may be the color of envy, but blue is the color we covet. We’ve hunted it down, prized it, copied, borrowed, and sometimes been left to create it ourselves out of thin air. One region’s blue often began somewhere else. The origins of China’s beloved blue-and-white porcelain were in West Asia. From China, blue and white made its way to Japan, and throughout Asia, and then on to Europe, where it found a feverish market of admirers, as well as copyists laboring to decode its mysteries. Along the way came the blues of Vincennes, Sèvres, Delft, Wedgwood’s blue jasperware, and the ubiquitous transfer-printed Blue Willow pattern.

      As far as I can tell, blue has never meant just one thing. In the seventeenth century, Dutch painters placed blue-and-white Chinese porcelain in their still lifes as symbols of luxury, while in ancient Rome, blue was a color of the working class—the original blue collar. For fancier blues, the Romans used dye from the indigo plant, which today gives my everyday blue jeans their shade. Hokusai used indigo, too, in parts of his print The Great Wave. But when it came to depicting the wave itself, he favored the exciting new Prussian blue, brought to Japan by Dutch traders. In turn, the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh chose the same blue for his pulsating skies. These connections continue. As I

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1