Talk:International Klein Blue
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[edit] CMYK
The sources of information about IKB that I consulted all have the same RGB value, but different CMYK values ([1], [2] and [3]). I suppose there is not an exact conversion. Also, the range is different, because it seems that Wikipedia uses a value between 0 and 255, and not between 0 and 100. I will convert the first CMYK value I've found to this range (0-255). Please, if I'm wrong please correct the article. Thanks. --suruena 16:36, 2005 Apr 9 (UTC)
- I've updated the color specs, referring to images at link is now dead and [4] and my own memory:
- Hex triplet #002199
- RGB (0, 33, 153)
- CMYK (100, 95, 12, 5)
- HSV (227°, 100%, 60%)
- I was unable to find actual specifications for the color but there should be some since it's a patented color. The physical properties of the paint beyond its color are in part responsible for its luminous appearance and are impossible to reproduce and difficult to estimate. I think the values I've chosen are a good representation, although I'm a little concerned that it's too dark; rather than second guess my intuition, I've tried to err on the side of accuracy to the above sites.
- As a saturated blue, CMYK cannot reproduce IKB well. The values given are Photoshop 8's conversion from Adobe RGB (1998) -> U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2 with Perceptual intent and would produce only a poor approximation of IKB. Is there a wikipedia policy regarding giving color values for out-of-gamut colors?
- If I were forced to pick a PMS color (comparing swatches to just my memory, now) I would go with 293, which PS calls (0, 73, 178) and (100, 77, 12, 2). PS calls my choice closest to Reflex which makes me wonder again if it's too dark. But that, too, is a physical thing, not a display screen one. On screen, it's definitely a better choice. VermillionBird 21:42, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
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- Hm, it looks a little dark to me too... Anyway, googling a little I found that the patent number in France is 63471. The patent application is supposed to be in the book Yves Klein by Sidra Stich. Maybe if someone has that book. Or if anyone knows how to find old patents... --RE 22:47, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
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- I had accidentally made the image at Yves Klein slightly lighter; I've updated this article so the two colors match. I'll now leave it alone unless I can find a definitive source. VermillionBird 15:14, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
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How about details on the sythetic resin and the recipe for combining the pigment and resin? I was fortunate to see a Klein exhibition in Australia in 1998, and more than the exact shade of blue, it was the application of the blue that seemed mesmerizing. The "powdered" appearance of the pigment, with the barely perceptable shadows of the tiny pigment granules, gave the surfaces of his blue canvases their power. I'd love to know how one applies pigment in the way that Klein did. I've found this online so far:
http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/49066 "Klein realized that pigments always tended to look richer and more gorgeous as a dry powder than when mixed with a binder, and he wanted to find a way to capture this appearance in a paint. In 1955 he found his answer: a new synthetic fixative resin called Rhodopas M60A, which could be thinned to act as a binder without impairing the chromatic strength of the pigment. This gave the paint surface a matt, velvety texture.
Klein collaborated with a Parisian chemical manufacturer and retailer of artists' materials named Edouard Adam to develop a recipe for binding ultramarine in the resin mixed with other organic chemicals. To protect this wonderful new paint from misuse that would compromise the purity of his idea, he patented it in 1960."
and this:
http://insearch.typepad.com/notes/2004/04/peter_wollen_on.html
"THE MONOCHROME ADVENTURE
Yves Klein started painting blue monochrome works in 1955. He had started talking about International Klein Blue (IKB) around 1957 or early 1958 and patented the actual process of making the paint itself in 1960. In essence, IKB is a slab of ultramarine pigment suspended in a clear commercial binder, Rhodopas. The effect is to preserve the granularity of the pigment and to seal it so that a thickness of pure pigment can be hung vertically on the wall, like an upended tray. The origins of IKB, according to Klein himself, are twofold, and both significant for Jarman's re-use of this particular medium. First, the idea of monochrome came to Klein while he was playing a jazz improvisation based on the thought of Max Heindel, a Rosicrucian philosopher, or cosmogonist, who profoundly influenced Klein. Heindel, in his exposition of Rosicrucian beliefs, claimed that blue was the highest of the colours, that of spirit freed from material form. Klein believed that his IKB monochromes symbolically presented the prospect of release from materiality and entry into a world of pure spirit. In art-theoretic terms, Klein considered that art should consist simply of pure colour and that the invention of drawing and image-making, the rival tradition to that of pure colour, represented, in effect, a fall from paradise. Historically, painting had begun with pure pigment. Others, like Malevich, had shown the way back to colour, but were still bedevilled by the idea of composition. Only Klein himself, however, fully understood the true meaning and role of monochrome.
In conjunction with his mystical belief in the spiritual power of monochrome, Klein also derived his insistence on pure pigment from his intense personal experience of the materiality of paint. In 1949, aged 21, he had worked for about a year in London, in the Old Brompton Road frame-shop of Robert Savage, a friend of his father. There he experienced w hat he called 'the illumination of matter'. As he wroter later,
I disliked colours ground in oil. They seemed dead to me; what pleased me above all were pure pigments, in powder, such as I saw them in the windows of retail paint-sellers. They had brightness and extraordinary, autonomous lives of their own. This was essential colour. Living tangible colourmatter. It was depressing to see such glowing powder, once mixed in a distemper, or whatever medium intended as a fixative, lose its value, tarnish, become dull. One might obtain effects of paste but after drying it wasn't the same; the effective colour magic had vanished.
Traditionally, ultramarine was the most precious of pigments, which for centuries could be obtained only from lapis lazuli quarried at a single mine in Afghanistan, shipped to Europe via Venice or Aleppo. The mine was first described in the west in 1837, by which time it was exhausted. To IKB Klein later added gold leaf, which he had worked with in the same frame-shop, when gilding frams for Savage, and then rose, to complete his colour repertoire, as a tribute to the Rose Cross. Klein's approach to colour and pigment combined many elements: an obsession with its spiritual meaning, an optical delight in its intensity and granularity, an occult interest in its symbolic interpretation, a fascination with the precious and the antique...."
- I hate to make a nusiance of myself but there are bits of this article I don't like. Firstly the speculation '(the color effectively becoming the art)' which is not wholy accurate, also 'Klein painted models' naked bodies' implies he painted them, he didn't its common knowledge that he worked in a tux and white gloves and distanced himself from the paint, lastly the phrase 'more conventional single-color canvases.' implies that these were ordinary art for the time of painting, however they were not conventional hence the reason they were not accepted by the salon and that they were controvercial. I would change the article, but last time I did I got in trouble with the wiki authorites, anyway I'm doing an artist study for A-level and when I saw this article thought it needed some clearing up! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.6.108.182 (talk) 21:30, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
