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I'm Blue (Da Ba Dee)
Jan. 18th, 2025 12:04 amI'm working on writing up my best books of 2024 entry but I got carried away talking about Bleu: histoire d'une couleur (Blue: history of a colour) by Michel Pastoureau, so I'm moving it to its own entry.
Pastoureau is a historian focusing on symbolism so this was super fascinating! It uses the colour blue specifically to examine the social/cultural place of colours throughout history in Europe, mostly France, but there is at least one transatlantic trip to talk about blue jeans.
Blue is picked because it's a relatively "new" colour as a standalone rather than a type of black, green or purple. Many languages don't have a blue/green distinction, for example -- I wrote about how this shows up in Brezhoneg/Breton here. The comments have discussion about other languages.
The history of colours is particularly hard to study, because textiles decay, dyes and paints change colours over time and languages evolve both through time and place. All this without mentioning that the quality and colour of the light itself affects how a colour appears: the same object might look very different under candle light and sunlight.
The main take away of the book iswe live in a society that colours are not physical phenomenon, but social ones. Yes, there is the physical reality of what one person's eyes perceive, but how they interpret and communicate that reality is completely context dependant.
I will now proceed to list a bunch of facts I learned reading this book:
- In the Middle Ages, there was a debate on the metaphysical nature of colour: is it a property of the object itself and thus matter and thus sinful or is it a property of light and thus divine? The Catholic church went with "divine", in the end. Interestingly, centuries later, the Reformation went with "sinful" -- though I don't know that the earlier debate was explicitly referenced rather than a wholesale rejection of Catholicism's whole deal.
- The liturgical colours of the Catholic do not include blue. I was shocked to read this because I had never thought of it and the colour blue is so strongly tied to Mary, but it is true. The reason blue is tied to Mary is that it was extremely expensive and God's mom deserves the best.
- Goethe should turn on his location. I just want to talk. (He disapproves of blue walls. I have a blue wall in my bedroom.)
- The word "indigo" comes from the fact bricks of dried extract from the indigo plant were used in Europe as dyes -- and thought to be rocks from India.
- In the Middle Ages, pale blue was closer to pink than dark blue. Colours were grouped by saturation, not hue.
- In the Renaissance, blue was a warm colour. (The book has dates throughout, as much as possible. I'm not very good at remembering them.)
- Red dyers and blue dyers were different jobs and never shall the twain meet. There was a practical consideration for this: one needs hot water to work, the other cold. There was also a cultural aspect to this division as northern France focused on red dyes and southern on blue.
- Which lead to a trend in the late 13th century in northern France churches where the devil was depicted in blue, such as this stained glass window:
Pastoureau is a historian focusing on symbolism so this was super fascinating! It uses the colour blue specifically to examine the social/cultural place of colours throughout history in Europe, mostly France, but there is at least one transatlantic trip to talk about blue jeans.
Blue is picked because it's a relatively "new" colour as a standalone rather than a type of black, green or purple. Many languages don't have a blue/green distinction, for example -- I wrote about how this shows up in Brezhoneg/Breton here. The comments have discussion about other languages.
The history of colours is particularly hard to study, because textiles decay, dyes and paints change colours over time and languages evolve both through time and place. All this without mentioning that the quality and colour of the light itself affects how a colour appears: the same object might look very different under candle light and sunlight.
The main take away of the book is
I will now proceed to list a bunch of facts I learned reading this book:
- In the Middle Ages, there was a debate on the metaphysical nature of colour: is it a property of the object itself and thus matter and thus sinful or is it a property of light and thus divine? The Catholic church went with "divine", in the end. Interestingly, centuries later, the Reformation went with "sinful" -- though I don't know that the earlier debate was explicitly referenced rather than a wholesale rejection of Catholicism's whole deal.
- The liturgical colours of the Catholic do not include blue. I was shocked to read this because I had never thought of it and the colour blue is so strongly tied to Mary, but it is true. The reason blue is tied to Mary is that it was extremely expensive and God's mom deserves the best.
- Goethe should turn on his location. I just want to talk. (He disapproves of blue walls. I have a blue wall in my bedroom.)
- The word "indigo" comes from the fact bricks of dried extract from the indigo plant were used in Europe as dyes -- and thought to be rocks from India.
- In the Middle Ages, pale blue was closer to pink than dark blue. Colours were grouped by saturation, not hue.
- In the Renaissance, blue was a warm colour. (The book has dates throughout, as much as possible. I'm not very good at remembering them.)
- Red dyers and blue dyers were different jobs and never shall the twain meet. There was a practical consideration for this: one needs hot water to work, the other cold. There was also a cultural aspect to this division as northern France focused on red dyes and southern on blue.
- Which lead to a trend in the late 13th century in northern France churches where the devil was depicted in blue, such as this stained glass window:
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