BLUE

Exhibit gallery hosts a group exhibition dedicated to the multiple meanings associated with the colour blue through the works of seven artists.

A favourite colour of Europeans who associate it with the sea and the pleasures of summer, blue appears in many advertising images and is used in police uniforms and denim fabrics. Michel Pastoureau reminds us that the colour blue has been reserved since the Middle Ages for representations of sacred power (the Virgin’s mantle) or political power, enshrined as a royal colour and chosen as the symbol of the kings of France.

Precisely because of the proximity of certain bluish pigments (lapis lazuli, azurite, pastel, indigo…) to black, blue is often associated with sadness and melancholy. This dark blue differs from Italian, whose azzurro corresponds to the sky tone, while blu is a deep blue.

Our planet, characterised by the colour of its oceans, is blue, while Saturn is the planet of the melancholic. Renaissance philosophers discovered that the emancipated artists of their time displayed the characteristics of the Saturnian temperament: they were contemplative, meditative, suspicious, solitary and creative. This historical moment gave rise to the image of the alienated artist that was captured in the study “Born under the sign of Saturn” published by Rudolph and Margot Wittkower in 1963, a large inventory of the tormented, licentious and bizarre lives of Renaissance, Baroque and pre-Romantic painters.