The Blue Revolution

There was an artist, his  name was Yves Klein.

He was french.  He was on the art scene during the late 40's and throughout the 50's.  He is considered the father of conceptual art.  Conceptual art meaning that art was fundamentally about the process, the experience, not the product.  As in painting nude bodies and pressing them on canvases while an orchestra plays, or making images on paper from burning it in front of an audience, or painting a whole gallery the same color white, the doors, the lights, the floor...and that being the "art".  All of which Klein did.  He was also the first artist to bring onto the art scene monochromatic pieces. (Monochormatic being...of all one color.)  He was into the experience of the color, how it made you feel, what it made you think, what it made you remember, that kind of thing.

 He died in 1962 at the age of 34.  A few months later his only son was born.  Tragic.
But tragedy is not what I wish to convey to you on this day, it is just a sidebar that is so common in stories about artists and art.  That topic will be another blog.

Today, I want to convey to you...Blue.
Yes, I said Blue.

This Yves Klein...he was into blue.  He was so into blue that he had a patten on his blue, International Klein  Blue.

Stan the Man, my father, Stan Padilla for you new readers, is really into blue as well.
After my mom died, he went through a phase, understandably so, where he didn't create much.  But once on the other side of this phase, he came out blue.
Not literally.  But if he did, we would call him Papa Smurf. (His grandchildren call him Papa)
 Like Picasso had a cubist period, Degas had his dancers and Hugh Heffner had a blonde phase, my dad is having a blue phase.

Aside from a "phase", my dad has really taken up Blue as a way of life so to speak.  And as the world synchronistically realigns itself...our home and specifically Sophia has blue enter her life in new and unexpected ways.

So I wonder...?  How does this color affect our lives?  Why are we drawn to certain colors at certain times in our lives?  Why do we have resistance to certain colors?  Why are baby girls put in pink and purple and baby boys in blue?  Why do we in the West get married in white and wear black to funerals and in the East white is the color worn to put to rest the dead?

Is it culture that defines our color agenda?  Is there something inherent in the colors themselves that are somehow universal?  Do we cling as a society to the standards set by previous generations or approach the very element that helps us distinguish one object from the next and we from each other with fresh eyes and new visions?

Back to this Blue...it is half of what we see in our world everyday.  The sky, in varying shades and intensities.  If you are really lucky, your water is blue, and here in Oregon and in Lake Tahoe,  we are very lucky.

Yves Klein's most famous quote is, " Blue is the color of the invisible becoming visible."  I think there might be some truth in that.

So my dad may be onto something with this blue deal he has going on. He may be onto more than one thing, but at the very least this one thing.

Blue....it's  is pretty hot right now.

For right now, you just get a snippet into the blue world I got to be around while I visited my dad during my trip to CA,  a few Klein Blues and Sophia's emerging blue world.

A few weeks from now I will take you on a journey though the blue world of my dad's artwork.