Three Colors: Blue | Hacker News Reader

Three Colors: Blue

philipball.blogspot.com

58 pointssignor_bosco10 comments

The name is a reference to the (extremely good) Three Colors trilogy of movies by Krzysztof Kieślowski. Each movie stands on its own but they also work together and reference each other very slightly. They aren't monochrome but the title colour of each movie is certainly dominant in its palette.

If you squint you can relate them to the French Flag and the French ideals of Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite... But you do have to squint, Kieślowski made only a thin pretense of doing what the people paying for the art wanted, and since he was a genius they seem to have made only a thin pretense of demanding he do so.

Not only was he a genius, but also an extremely hard-working person, oftentimes spending nights in the editing room after hours of exhaustive work on the set. Kieslowski's attention to detail was remarkable - see an analysis of a scene from the movie "Blue", narrated by the director himself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-k6sIN-2K4

He attracted top talent to his productions, including actors, cinematographers (Slawomir Idziak, whom I had a pleasure to spend many hours with), and composers (Zbigniew Preisner). Although most of his work was created in the times of USSR and communism in Poland, he continued to push the boundaries of filmmaking with the limited resources he had access to.

If you have never seen Klein's blue in real life, just know it looks very different from the rendering you see on the website.

IIRC Hubertus Bigend (from Gibson's novels) wore a IKB suit just because it couldn't be faithfully reproduced on screens and photos.

Correct. If anyone's wondering why: Klein's blue has a somewhat powdery surface that disperses the color in all directions. As a result it's more intense than it would be if the surface were smooth.

I believe this is the same trick behind vantablack.

The article mentions a mine in Afghanistan as a source of the best Lapis Lazuli, but I believe in ancient Egypt (and probably the Classical era), it was the _only_ source.

There are some really interesting documentaries about the mine, and what impresses me most is just how remote and dangerous the trek is. Mining there 4000-5000 years ago with primitive tools, and the journey required to get the Lapis from Afghanistan all the way to Egypt is really very remarkable. It's a difficult journey today even with Range Rovers.

Related to the OP, but not Lapis mining: an interesting related discovery (2009): https://chemistry.oregonstate.edu/content/story-yinmn-blue

Occasionally I fantasize about painting the front door to my house in International Klein Blue. The binder of true IKB seems to be a polyvinyl acetate, so I wonder how well it would hold up for a semi-enclosed exterior application. Anyone have any idea?

(The next question, of course, would then be sourcing that quantity of paint....)

Only $100/liter:

https://ressource-peintures.com/en/collections/yves-klein/

For everyone’s delight, the best website on the history of pigments: http://www.webexhibits.org/pigments/intro/history.html

See also Ad Reinhard's blue paintings, which are combinations of very subtly different blues. I like them a lot and recently learned about them in Edward Tufte's excellent book Visual Explanations. https://www.google.com/search?q=ad+reinhardt+blue&tbm=isch

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