Blue in human culture
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please discuss this issue on the talk page or replace this tag with a more specific message. This article has been tagged since March 2007. |
Blue is a popular colour in many aspects of human culture such as visual arts, music, literature, religion, politics and science.
[edit] Art
Blue in painting
Traditionally, blue has been considered a primary color in painting, with the secondary color orange as its complement, but this is not consistent with modern scientific color theory. As the mixing of pigments is a subtractive color process, the true primary colors in painting and printing are cyan, magenta and yellow (with black often added for practical reasons; see CMYK color model).
The artist Yves Klein developed International Klein Blue.
- Blue pigments
- Azurite
- Cerulean blue
- Cobalt blue
- Milori B
[edit] Books and written works
In the United Kingdom the traditional covering for Parliamentary and official publications and reports in the nineteenth century was a deep blue, and the reports came to be known as "blue books". In present usage a blue book is usually an almanac or similar reference work. For example, the Oregon Blue Book is the official directory and fact repository of the state of Oregon, while the Harvard Bluebook dictates a style of legal citation. The Blue Book is a term for a policy document issued by the Federal Communications Commission in the United States in 1946, urging television networks to uphold their commitment to public service. The Kelley Blue Book is a popular guide used for automobile prices.
A "blue examination book" is a book of blank, lined writing paper having a blue cover. It is often used in American schools and universities as a convenient place for students to write answers to problems and essays during an examination. A popular supplier of blue examination books is Roaring Spring Paper Products in Roaring Spring, PA, originally founded as the Roaring Spring Blank Book Company in 1887.
Blue pages are a telephone directory of government offices—either an official blue book or a section of a commercial directory. Compare with the yellow pages or white pages.
The Blue Room is a play by David Hare whose's title possibly plays on the term "blue" as relating to sex. The printing of the script has a blue-toned cover and productions often employ a heavy or pervasive use of the colour blue in the set, costumes, and poster.
In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy there are many references to the Hooloovoo, "a super-intelligent shade of the color blue."
In House of Leaves every instance of the word House is in blue.
On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry is a book-length essay by William H. Gass.
In Marisha Pessl's 'Special Topics in Calamity Physics' the main protagonist is a girl by the name of Blue.
[edit] Mathematics, science, and technology
- "Big Blue" is a nickname for IBM.
- IBM's chess computer (which defeated chess champion Garry Kasparov) was called Deep Blue.
- Users of Microsoft Windows often use the term "blue" to describe a computer that has encountered a "blue screen of death."
- A blue box is an electronic device with a tone pulsator that simulates a telephone operator's dialing console by replicating the tones used to switch long-distance calls and using them to route the user's own call, bypassing the normal switching mechanism. They were used to avoid charges for telephone calls.
- In medical diagrams, blue is used to represent veins carrying deoxygenated blood back to the heart. Deoxygenated blood is actually reddish violet. When a medical patient is not getting enough oxygen or has stopped breathing, however, their skin often takes a blue tint, a condition called cyanosis. The blue color of veins is associated with deoxygenated myoglobin, a compound similar to hemoglobin and found in tissues.
- In astronomy, a blue moon is the second full moon in a calendar month, the third full moon in a season that has four, or a moon that appears blue because of particles in the atmosphere. All are uncommon enough that the expression "once in a blue moon" means "once in a great while" or "infrequently."
- Stars of stellar class O are called blue stars.
- Additionally, the color blue is a trademark of the Dow Chemical Company. [1]
- In the CIE 1931 color space, the complement of blue is yellow.
- Blue 80A filters are used to correct the excessive redness of tungsten lighting in color photography.
- The Blu-ray and HD DVD formats utilize a blue-violet laser operating at a wavelength of 405 nm. Conventional DVDs and CDs use red and infrared lasers at 650 nm and 780 nm respectively.
- Bluetooth is an industrial standard for personal area networks, and is used to connect a variety of devices for the purpose of reliably transmitting information signals.
[edit] Music
Blues is a music genre. A blue note is a note between the regular notes on the scale. Blue notes are the most important notes in the blues scale.
The Blue Danube waltz is perhaps the most famous waltz written by Johann Strauss the younger.
Bands called "Blue" include an American group and a British musical group: the American rock group Blue and the British boy band Blue. Blue is the title of an album by the Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, and Kind of Blue is the title of an album by Miles Davis, one of the world's best-selling jazz recordings. Blue Man Group is a performance art group founded in New York City in 1987.
Blue Train is an influential jazz album by John Coltrane. Rhapsody in Blue is a symphonic jazz composition for jazz band, piano, and orchestra by George Gershwin, while Love is Blue is a popular tune from the 1960s originally recorded by Vicky Leandros and most notably performed by Paul Mauriat.
"Blue" has been used as a song title by many artists, notably LeAnn Rimes and Eiffel 65. Cristian Castro's song "Azul" (Spanish for "blue") repeats the line "This love is blue as the sea" (Este amor es azul como el mar).
Other songs which use the word blue in their title include:
- "Blue" By Jason Becker off of Perspective
- "We the People Who Are Darker than Blue" by Curtis Mayfield, appearing on his debut album
- "Blue Room in Archway" and "Song from the Blueroom" by The Boo Radleys, both appearing on the album Kingsize
- "Blue Jay Way" and "For You Blue" by The Beatles (both written by George Harrison), appearing on the albums Magical Mystery Tour and Let It Be respectively
- "Blue Turns to Grey" by The Rolling Stones
- "Let Me Sing Your Blues Away" by the Grateful Dead, on the album Wake of the Flood
- "Stella Blue" by the Grateful Dead, on the album Wake of the Flood
- "Behind Blue Eyes" by The Who, appearing on the album Who's Next
- "Blue" by The Birthday Massacre from the album Violet
- "Tangled Up in Blue" by Bob Dylan from the album "Blood on the Tracks"
[edit] National, athletic, and university associations
Azzurro, a light blue, is the national colour of Italy (from the livery colour of the former reigning family, the House of Savoy).
Birmingham City F.C and Coventry City F.C. play in Royal Blue and Sky Blue respectivley.
Blue (along with white) is the national colour of Greece and Israel and the colour is seen on the Israeli and Greek flags.
Blue is used prominently at Boise State University. BSU is known for having the only blue playing surface in college football at Bronco Stadium. Nicknamed "The Smurf Turf", the field was installed in 1986 to represent the blue-collar work ethic of the city of Boise. ESPN broadcasts several games during the football season at Bronco Stadium. Boise State's current marketing campeign is even themed "Beyond the Blue".
Dark blue is associated with the University of Oxford and Florida International University. Reflex blue is associated with Savannah State University. Light blue is associated with the University of Cambridge. The sporting colors of these universities are called "the blues". Those who represent their university in certain sports are allowed to wear a blue blazer, and the selection of someone to represent their university is therefore known as being "awarded a blue". (At Cambridge, female students who are particularly attracted to male students with a blue are nicknamed "blue-tac"). The awarding of a Blue is followed by many universities in the Commonwealth of Nations for outstanding sporting achievement.
Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah is identified by a shade of light blue to differentiate from the University of Utah, which uses red. This color coding is especially apparent whenever the two universities play each other, which tends to divide the state into "Red Utah" and "Blue Utah."
A specific shade of dark blue is associated with Yale University. Blue Devils are the mascot of many American universities; Duke University's blue devils are the most famous. Ironically their rivals the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill also uses a shade of blue as their school color. This has led many to associate their school colors to differentiate shades of blue in daily occurrences, with the darker blue known as "Duke blue" and the lighter powder blue as "Carolina blue." Other universities with the mascot include Central Connecticut State University, Dillard University, Lawrence Technological University, State University of New York at Fredonia, and the University of Wisconsin-Stout. The University of Michigan wolverines' fans usually chant "Let's go blue!" during sporting events.
The Columbus Blue Jackets are a National Hockey League team based in Columbus, Ohio. The Blue Jays are the mascots of the Toronto Blue Jays, a Major League Baseball team, and its two minor league affiliates: the Dunedin Blue Jays in Dunedin, Florida, and the Pulaski Blue Jays in Pulaski, Virginia.
Blue is associated with the eastern direction in traditional East Asian cosmology. For reasons that are not entirely clear, the colour has traditionally been taken to represent the ancient Turkic race.
[edit] Political associations
- Main article: Political colour
Blue, like white, may represent authority, as opposed to revolutionary red or anarchist black.
Internationally, blue is the symbol for conservatism and conservative political parties. In Ireland, the political connotations of blue, denote the Fine Gael party, a Christian Democratic organization and Ireland's traditional "law-and-order" party. The accompanying term Blueshirt is used as a term of abuse against them, linking them to the quasi fascist Blueshirts of the 1930s, from whom they are in part descended. In the United Kingdom, it is the colour of the Conservative Party. There are several notable exceptions and different meanings other than the conservatism:
*In the United States, since the 2000 presidential election, blue represents the Democratic Party, and "blue states" are states that tend to favor the Democrats. (The rival right-wing Republicans became associated with red, and states that favor the Republicans are "red states".) While there was no universal color association prior to 2000, some electoral maps either used blue to represent the incumbent and red for the challenger, or alternated. Each party uses all three national colors (red, white, and blue) in official materials. The Blue Dog Democrat coalition is a caucus of conservative Democrats in Congress.
During the American Civil War, blue was used to represent the Union, while gray represented the Confederacy. This representation was based on the uniforms worn by the respective armies, although uniforms remained non-standard throughout the war and sometimes the colors were switched. The coalition with the Kuomintang (KMT), People's First Party, and the New Party in the Republic of China in Taiwan, which favors unification with mainland China is called the Pan-blue coalition due to the color of the party banner of the Kuomintang which is considered the dominant party of the coalition.
[edit] Prizes
"Blue ribbon" is a term used to describe something of high quality, such as a Blue-Ribbon Panel or a blue-ribbon commission. This comes from the practice of awarding blue ribbons for first place in competitions. The Blue Riband was a notional prize conferred since the 1860s to the ship that made the fastest trans-Atlantic crossing. The first ship actually to fly a blue pennant from her masthead upon winning this was the French liner Normandie in 1936.
[edit] Religion
Blue plays a symbolic role in a number of world religions. Because blue is the colour of the sky and sea, it has often symbolized divinity,[citation needed] as well as height and depth. It can also represent equilibrium, since its hue suggests a shade midway between white and black, day and night. To the ancient Egyptians, blue was the colour of truth.[citation needed]
Blue in Christianity
The inside of the open dome in Eastern Christian Churches is painted blue to give the impression of looking up into the heavens. Blue is also the colour Mary wears in iconography. During the European Renaissance, artists began painting Hell and specifically the Devil blue to convey the coldness of being distant from God. This is possibly inspired by Dante's Hell in the Divine Comedy, in which Satan is depicted as living in eternal ice at the center of Earth. Blue also represents the deadly sin of Lust.
Blue in Hinduism
In the Hindu faith, persons of a transcendental, or divine nature are displayed as being blue in colour to indicate their dark complexion. The deity Krishna is probably the most famous of this type of depiction within Hindu art. Lord Shiva's neck has blue colour to show that the poison he took to save the world from destruction is still staying in his throat.
Blue in Islam
A number of mosques in Iran are decorated in Persian blue tiles, including the great Shah Mosque of Isfahan.
Blue in Judaism
In the Torah, the Israelites were commanded to put fringes, tzitzit, on the corners of their garments, and to weave within these fringes a “twisted thread of blue (tekhelet).”[1] In ancient days, this blue thread was made from a dye extracted from a Mediterranean snail called the hilazon. Maimonides claimed that this blue was the colour of “the clear noonday sky”; Rashi, the colour of the evening sky.[2]
According to several rabbinic sages, blue is the colour of God’s Glory.[3] Staring at this colour aids in mediation, bringing us a glimpse of the “pavement of sapphire, like the very sky for purity,” which is a likeness of the Throne of God.[4] (The Hebrew word for glory, kavod, means “blue” in Arabic.) Many items in the Mishkan, the portable sanctuary in the wilderness, such as the menorah, many of the vessels, and the Ark of the Covenant, were covered with blue cloth when transported from place to place.[5]
The Flag of Israel has two blue stripes and a blue Star of David against a white background. An early Zionist poem explains that the colour white symbolizes great faith; blue the appearance of the firmament.[6] Because of its association with the State of Israel, blue has become very popular in contemporary Jewish design. Modern tallitot, for example, often have blue stripes on a white background.
[edit] Scientific natural standards for blue
- Emission spectrum of Cu2+
- Electronic spectrum of aqua-ions Cu(H2O)52+
[edit] Social class, occupation, and military associations
Blue may denote the working class, derived from the traditional colour of factory uniforms. Blue-collar workers are industrial workers and are often contrasted with white-collar office workers. However, in contrast to "blue collar," the phrase "blue blood" is used to mean "from an aristocratic background," because pale, untanned skin–historically, a sign of nobility–allows blue-tinged veins to show through.
Several vocations are associated with blue. Law enforcement, and uniformed police, often wear blue uniforms and have become associated with the color, as seen in phrases such as "boys in blue," "blue line," and "blue wall." Most police cars have blue colors, (once in a blue moon having red as well) and United Nations peacekeepers are uniformed in blue and white. "Bluecoat" (akin to "redcoat") refers to a uniformed police officer. Police in the People's Republic of China changed the color of their uniforms from green to blue in the late 1990s, partly to emphasize their civilian role. Since laws prohibit police from declaring a strike, the "blue flu" is a "sickout": a type of strike action in which police call in sick.
Blue is associated with many air forces and navies because of the color of their dress uniforms, while green is associated with armies.
- Navy blue is a particular shade of blue worn by sailors in the Royal Navy since 1748 and subsequently adopted by other navies around the world. The Blue Angels are an acrobatic flight squadron of the United States Navy.
- In the United States Army, "Old Glory Blue" (Navy blue) is the color of infantry, "Cobalt Blue" is the color of the Chemical Corps, "Oriental Blue" is the color of Military Intelligence, and Ultramarine Blue is the color of the Army Aviation.
- When the United States Air Force became independent from the Army in 1947, it inherited ultramarine blue as its distinctive color.
- The Royal Air Force and many other air forces use "Air Force Blue" (Sky blue) as their distinctive color; however their uniforms are often in blue-gray or dark blue.
Blue has historically been used for many uniforms of the French military.
[edit] Symbolism and expressions
Blue often denotes injury, such as in the phrase "black and blue," since it is the color of a bruise. Blue is used also as a word to denote a sad or melancholy state, as in depression, or simply a state of deep contemplation (however, the phrase "blue skies," referring to sunny weather, implies cheerfulness). Symbolically, blue is associated with that state, such as the term blue period to describe Pablo Picasso's work from 1901 to 1904.
- The Blessed Virgin Mary is generally depicted wearing blue.
- Blue is associated with water; on colored maps, oceans, lakes, and streams usually appear blue.
- Light blue is often associated with the cold. When with white, blue is associated with ice and snow; and by extension, winter.
- Blue can be associated with France, Quebec and the French Language. The term Les Bleus is often used in a sporting context. In all but motor sports, the Italian color is light blue, and Italian athletes are called Azzurri.
- Gradients of Blue and other smooth, relaxing visual techniques incorporating Blue are considered calming and soothing, perhaps related to its association with water and to the sky.
- Blue, when shown visually on a large scale, and when not directly trying to look smooth and relaxing, is occasionally associated with the idea of infinity.
- Blue has the connotation of conservatism, tradition, and stability (when in political context), as opposed to red which seems more radical, which is probably why blue is used more by conservative parties.
- Blue is often a color used to symbolize honesty and trustworthiness. Hence it is used by mortgage companies and banks, as well as the clothing of businesspeople. This is possibly another reason for the Democratic Party's appropriation of the color. Connected to this, blue traditionally is associated with the Christian virtue faith. Hence, it may also mean naivité, being "blue-eyed". In Scandinavia this expression is used for people who are easily tricked or cheated, and in Japanese the word "aoi," meaning "blue," also indicates innocence and inexperience.
- Blue sky is a widely used term used to describe the ability to conceptualize or create something from nothing. In other words, ex nihilo. It is a term that can describe a person, i.e. She's an amazing blue sky business analyst. It can also be used to illustrate constraints, i.e. You cannot work from a blue sky angle as there are limitations to what can be done for this project.
- In old Australian slang, a "blue" can also describe a fight or an argument. Men with red hair may be nicknamed "Bluey". The phrase "true blue" also means "genuine" (example : "He's a true blue Aussie").
- Blue comedy is comedy that uses references to socially taboo subjects such as sexual or lavatorial double entendre. Blue movie is a slang term for a pornographic film. There are also "blue magazines". This term is most common in Britain but also used in the United States, Norway and Israel.
- Blue law is the term for laws regulating issues of morality, such as alcohol, gambling, or pornography.
- Although blue is traditionally associated with infant or baby boys as pink is associated with infant/baby girls, there have also been periods in which pink was considered proper for boys and blue for girls, and times when no set color convention appears to have been in place. [2]
- In Swedish the phrase blåögd (blue-eyed) can refer to a naïve person or to an idea that is naïve.
- The German word for blue is used for "drunk". "blau machen" (make blue) means to skip work. In German, a bruise around the eye (from fighting) is called a "blue eye", and not a "black eye" like in English.
- In auto racing, a blue flag advises a car to yield to faster traffic behind.
- Royalty are sometimes described as having blue blood.
- A "blue chip" is the nickname for a stock that is thought to be safe and in excellent financial shape.
- Blue is the color claimed by the Crips street gang.
- Blueprint is a term for a design of something, usually important items.
- Cooked blue is a term used to describe a steak served extremely rare.
- Blues associated with music and emotion, i.e. "The Blues" and "To have the Blues," has commonly summed an inexpressible feeling of powerful loss or philosophical understanding of oneself in relation to the world around you; without the ability to express this sum as any simple direct definition from an emotional standpoint. The "blues" and the music associated with it are a distinct socially recognizable emotional and musical classification.
- Sporting event officials, but particularly in baseball, are addressed on field as 'blue' because of their uniform shirt color.
- "Once in a Blue Moon" is an old adage referring to things that don't happen very often.
- Metalwork on firearms treated with chemicals to protect and give a dark colored finish are said to have been "blued". The word blue then becomes a verb - "I blued the gun barrel." The finish itself is known as "bluing".
[edit] Television
Blue is the color and name of the main character (a dog) in the preschool animated educational television show Blue's Clues.
On Star Trek, medical and scientific personnel wear blue uniforms.
On Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends, there is a character named Blooregard Q. Kazoo, more commonly named Bloo, and pronounced blue. He is a blue bloblike imaginary friend.
On Power Rangers and it's Japanese counterpart, Super Sentai blue is one of the colors always worn by a Power Ranger or Super Sentai member. The others are red and yellow in Power Rangers, and red in Super Sentai.
