No one can introduce himself better than Yves Joris, so I will leave the honour to him – but not before mentioning that Joris is one of the most enthusiastic Belgian art viewers and writers I know. He not only sees everything, but also seems to hear everything. In other words, he is not just smart, but also a great observer. Take my word for it. And now for the introduction:
“When I am asked to introduce myself, my answer has been the same for more than 25 years: during office hours, I am a banker who juggles numbers and outside of office hours, I replace the world of numbers with those of words and images: a beautiful phrase, a light that casts a certain shadow on the wall or a final brushstroke that dries unnoticed on the canvas. It's at times like this that I think of the words of English author William Hazlitt: ‘I'm not smart, but I like to observe.’ That's how millions of people saw the apple fall, but Newton was the first to wonder why. As a freelance observer for several (online) magazines, you can follow this art flaneur on his blog (www.kunstflaneur.be) or on Instagram and share with him his findings in the art world.”
How many artists can claim to have given their name to a colour? Yves Klein, who had been interested in monochrome painting throughout his career, came up with his International Klein Blue (IKB) in 1956. This ultramarine colour, which became his trademark, was an ode to the blue skies of Nice. And since I share the same first name as the French artist, this may partly explain my preference for this colour.
Blue is a colour that can't be boxed in, another reason why I'm drawn to it. In iconography, blue often refers to purity and we immediately think of Mary's mantle. But that same blue can also carry a feeling of melancholy or sadness, a ‘blues’ that uses music to expose the soul. Or to put it in the words of the master himself: “Blue has no dimensions, it is beyond dimensions, whereas the other colours are not … All colours arouse specific associative ideas, psychologically material or tangible, while blue suggests at most the sea and sky, and they, after all, are in actual, visible nature what is most abstract.” (Yves Klein)
With this feeling of purity and melancholy in mind, I selected a number of artists who all have the same quality and I discovered (to a large extent) ‘my blue’.