Something blue

…or I should say: Something about blue. Yes, at this point, I would like to write about the color blue.

Colors are complex, ambiguous, and, for many artists, a mystery they can never fully fathom throughout their entire artistic careers.

Blue is the color of the spirit, virtue, knowledge, and science. However, it also stands for coldness, harshness, pride, and insensitivity. In the tradition of wearing something new, something old, something borrowed, and something blue at a wedding, blue is the symbolic color of fidelity as a high virtue.

Blue was the most expensive of all colors in painting. Made from lapis lazuli, it was more valuable than pure gold.

As a dye for textiles, however, blue was cheap, which is why everyone could afford blue clothing. For this reason, blue was not intended as a color for liturgical vestments in the church; that would have been too profane.

Nevertheless, blue is considered a divine color. In art, God the Father is depicted in a radiant blue robe, as is the Virgin Mary.

Thus, blue demonstrates how closely a color’s meaning is linked to its monetary value.

Colors are relative.