What is blue?
The most precious color in art, for centuries.
Because?
It was very expensive.
Was it difficult to obtain?
From the aluminosilicate, sulfur atoms three by three, in an atomic tension that absorbs all colors... except blue.
By repelling blue, we see it, is that it?
Yes. It was in lapis lazuli, a semi-precious stone with lazurite, the sapphire of the Bible.
Where was this stone?
In Afghanistan: it came via Persia, it was called ultramarine blue. It was used as a pigment since the 6th century, and in the 15th century its powder was refined into pure, brilliant blue.
For Renaissance painters?
More expensive than gold, this blue was used to paint the Virgin's mantle on altarpieces.
Until when was it like this?
Until being produced synthetically in the 19th century. As a child I saw Yves Klein's blue Venus one day in the Berardo Collection, and that blue shocked me.
What blue is it?
Klein Blue: vibrant and velvety texture, created by Yves Klein in the mid-20th century, with binder and pigment. What a blue painting of powerful light!
You study the materials of art.
Because my mother played makeup for me.
Did that mark you?
I sensed the power of beauty: combed hair or an eye line on a pharaoh...
He might as well have dedicated himself to art.
But a teacher showed me the periodic table of elements: the world was ordered, how beautiful! A criterion of truth.
Why does something seem beautiful to us?
Mystery. The formula E=mc2 is beautiful and that points to a truth.
What was the first thing we painted?
The negative of a hand, spraying soot and ocher on the wall of a cave... about 65,000 years ago.
And also some bison...
Our drive to leave a mark. For Picasso, all art was then decadence.
A scientist, what does she see in art?
Who chooses his materials for their symbolism. Art and science always go together.
A very symbolic material is gold...
Rare and unchanging. And so ductile that with only 130 grams of gold you can make ten thousand sheets of gold leaf measuring 8 x 8 centimeters. I understand that alchemists intended to synthesize gold. And meanwhile they were discovering things.
New materials?
And colors, such as the varieties of white: lead white, titanium white, zinc white, China white, Spanish white, the best for whitewashing...
And what about the color black?
The blackest black color that exists in the universe is Vantablack.
¿Vantablack?
It is a synthetic material made from carbon nanotubes, and it manages to absorb 99.99% of light!
It will look completely black, then.
Seeing a block of Vantablack on silver paper generates the mirage of seeing a deep hole, a deep black well.
Where does the absorbed light go?
It is retained in the nanotubes and dissipates heat.
Help me now to look at the bright colors of Piet Mondrian's paintings...
His art surpasses forms, pierces the veil of appearances to see giant pixels of color: red, blue, yellow, black.
Checkered... And what about the sculptors?
I fall in love with Chillida for the use of materials, such as concrete in his In Praise of the Horizon, facing the sea in Gijón.
I know her, I was inside that monumental sculpture.
Remember its size, its circular shape, which rises from the ground to the sky and you inside: everything appeals to the horizon and that color, that concrete that rusts, earth color... At the same time sculpture, building, shelter... Masterful.
What other artist captivates you?
The Russian Kazimir Malevich, who with the minimum formally achieves the maximum emotionally: in his controversial painting White on White he paints a white square rotating, inclined, on a white background.
White on white?
Yes, and it looks monochromatic, but no! If you get closer, you see that the square is a warmer white than the white in the background.
Do museums lift our spirits?
And also walk through your neighborhood with clean eyes, look at it as if you had never seen it before. I love inducing that feeling of strangeness and enjoying it. It's a lifestyle.
That's what Guy Debord's situationists did, it seems to me...
Certainly, they walked knowing that the terrain conditions the drift of the walk itself: psychogeography is very real!
