Jo Hsieh’s Blue Paintings

By Chen Kuang-Yi, Professor of the Department of Fine Arts at the National Taiwan University of Arts
 

　Jo Hsieh is best known for her Blue Series. Although her early works include a few blue paintings, it wasn’t until 1997 that she started to base her work around this color.
Strictly speaking, Hsieh’s artistic career was not particularly long: it began gradually, in 1991, after she went to study in the UK, but ended abruptly in 2017, when she passed away from illness. Of the twenty-six years that Hsieh worked as an artist, she devoted twenty of them to the study of the color blue. The sketchbook she left behind contains a mountain of research related to the color blue: studies on blue color gradation; blue on various forms of media; its dynamics in various different states and arrangements; experiments with splashing and dripping techniques using blue paint; as well as the ‘musical’ or ‘automatic’ techniques that she was especially fond of using. Of course, these studies were also conducted using other colors, but Hsieh always emphasized how special the color blue was to her. In her notes, she wrote: “I have a strong personal preference towards blue. I feel that it speaks to me. It is mysterious and incredible, transparent yet vibrant." She also said: "Blue is calm, not arrogant. It represents a kind of rational stance, mental stability, and the balance of body, mind and soul.”

　Hsieh referred to blue as “the color of philosophy,” and even thought of blue as the “fundamental color in her thought process" . This realization and her preference for blue is what urged her to create monochrome paintings utilizing blue pigments after she settled in the UK during the 90s. Later on, these works became the basis for the Powder-Pigment Series of her Non-Space collection.
These unique works were created via a complicated process. After covering the canvas with a blue acrylic base paint, Hsieh would create subtle, mysterious protrusions shaped like Sanskrit, or water waves. She would then take a special pigment mixture containing a variety of blue colorants and smear it onto the canvas by hand. These square, rectangular and circular monochrome paintings, possessed of a mysterious summoning power, are as vast as the universe and as small as a ping-pong ball. They emit an indescribable light in the spaces where they are hung. In fact, these works should not be regarded merely as paintings: for Hsieh, the purpose of creating them was to transcend the boundaries of painting. What’s even more astonishing is that she managed to do this with just one color – blue.

　Blue is not an ordinary color. The reason why Jo Hsieh and countless artists around the world can become so obsessed with the color blue, putting it at the heart of their creations, is because it holds a unique position within art history. People normally think of blue as the color of the sky and the sea, but in Homer’s epic poems, the ocean is described as οἶνοψ πόντος (deep burgundy), which is a dark, wine-red color. Aristotle’s color theory identified five colors: black, white, red, yellow and green. It’s clear that, in ancient Greek civilization, people were not aware of or did not possess the concept of the color blue. However, they did discover purple in an extract from sea snails – hence, the various myths and legends about the color purple. This shows us that blue is, in fact, rarely seen in nature.
In fact, the term ‘blue’ first appeared in the Egyptian language. The Egyptian were also the oldest manufacturers of blue pigment in the world, and people came to learn about blue through the pigments that they sold around the world. Blue had always been the rarest and most expensive color, so it was used solely by royals. In Byzantine mosaics, blue pieces were rarely used because they were too expensive. The blue pigments used in medieval Bible manuscripts or murals were ground from expensive gemstones such as lapis lazuli. The widespread use of blue among regular people only came about after industrialization. Thanks to industrial development, people began to make blue pigment materials with chemicals, manufacturing all sorts of paint tubes. Jo Hsieh utilized more than one shade of blue, and put a lot of effort into the research of materials. She created her signature blue by mixing various pigments such as ultramarine blue, Prussian blue, navy blue, and cobalt blue in different proportions. 

　When blue pigments became commonly available after the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, artists began to apply blue in their creations extensively, giving it special depth and meanings, such as Picasso's Blue Period or Kandinsky's The Blue Rider. In a 1925 art piece, Miró painted a patch of blue and wrote: "This is the color of my dreams.” (Ceci est la couleur de mes rêves.) Annie Ivanova believes that one of the turning points in Jo Hsieh's artistic development was seeing the original works of various Impressionists, in particular Monet's water lilies  and his work Blue Water Lilies. Monet not only painted water lilies – he even built a pond in his garden in 1893 for the purpose of growing water lilies. The water lilies he planted were mostly white and red, but it was the blue tones that dominate his painting, and bring the elements together. In the final years of his life, Monet barely left the house, and took on the impossible task of painting his Water Lilies series. Though the removal of horizon lines may make his composition seem abstract, in fact the skylight, reflections, plants and constantly moving ripples exist in a different space and dimension, and are still there. These fragments of nature represent a microcosm of the infinite; a boundless nature that can never be fully depicted, and the color blue undoubtedly multiplies this feeling of vastness.

　Another artist who profoundly influenced Jo Hsieh is Yves Klein (1928-1962). Annie Ivanova believes that Jo Hsieh was first exposed to Klein’s work in the year 2000; however, her Blue Series can be traced back to 1997-98, and Jo Hsieh never mentioned Klein in her notes, nor to anyone who knew her. Nevertheless, one can see a relationship between Klein Blue and Jo Hsieh's blue. In 1960, Klein and his friend Édouard Adam, a paint supplier, used a special binder to intensify an ultramarine pigment, and trademarked the resulting color under the name ‘International Klein Blue.’ Philip Ball regards this as an artistic act, rather than a commercial one . This interpretation is born out by what we know about Klein: despite referring to himself as a mere painter, his methods of painting were derived from other creative and mysterious actions, including the creation of pigments. Klein began creating monochromatic paintings in colors like orange and green in 1954; but from 1957 onwards, he began to show a preference for ultramarine, as he believed it was the highest performance of blue. Interestingly, he was fond of the elusiveness and fragility of pure pigments, hence many of his works were directly created with pigments in powder – a practice Jo Hsieh also engaged in. Powdered pigment lacks  gloss and is difficult to apply, preserve and collect; however, in view of these two artists, this is not a shortcoming: rather, it highlights the purity of painting and the ‘materialization of the immaterial.’

　Klein once said: "The blue sky is my first artwork." He described how he suddenly felt disgusted with the birds that destroyed the pure blue of the sky when he looked up at it at the age of eighteen. His observations hew close to the contemplation of the void (vide) and immateriality. In his lecture L'architecture de l'air, which Klein delivered at the Sorbonne University in 1959, he declared: " Blue has no dimensions, it is out of dimension… All the colors bring associations of concrete ideas. Whereas the blue recalls at most the sea and the sky, what there is of more abstract in the tangible and visible nature ” 

　Klein’s observation of blue being dimensionless, void, abstract and immaterial is very close to Jo Hsieh’s concept of ‘Non-Space.’ Jo Hsieh believed that this space exists in everyone’s mind; that Non-Space is: “immaterial, like air,” and emphasized that it corresponds to no rules: “it has no beginning, and no end.” She also said that Non-Space is “interior, it is thought, it is consciousness, it is completeness and it is also nothingness. It is intuitive, it is happiness, it has no shape, it has no body. It is limpid, and, like fog, it never makes demands. It is natural, it flies, it is timeless, it is abstract and has neither laws nor limits; it is infinite, and it is beauty! It exists in the depths of the soul! It is pure, and simple!”  This series of adjectives may seem extremely abstract, but it clearly points to how indescribable Non-Space is, and Jo Hsieh's lack of words to describe it. Such a space obviously does not exist in the material world; rather, it is a mysterious place that exists in our souls or our imaginations. 

　How can artworks be used to compare, symbolize, or represent the world? Klein firmly believed that blue monochrome painting “is the only physical way of painting which permits access to the spiritual absolute...” Regarding the miraculousness of monochrome paintings, Denys Riout provided the most vivid description, stating that monochrome painting is “a representation of a lack of representation, a visibility of the invisible.” Yet because of this absence, such paintings are imbued with a strong intentionality, providing endless possibilities for imaginative artists and thus testing the insights of art critics.  

　Klein's monochrome paintings further challenged the definition of painting. The four corners of some of his paintings are rounded, while some paintings have three-dimensional raised textures on the surface that destroys the picture plane. In 1957, Klein held an exhibition at Colette Allendy's gallery called Pigment Pur with an installation consisting only of blue pigments. These pigments were placed horizontally on the gallery floor, which allowed the pigment bindings and the painting to achieve the highest freedom of immateriality. As Klein described it: “The possibility of leaving the pigment particles in total freedom, as they are in powder […] is very satisfactory to me[…] To free up the pigment powders that I discovered at the pigment supplier, and present them as paintings, I just need to spread them on the ground. The invisible force of attraction would have held them on the surface of the ground, without altering them.

　Because of this, we know that keeping pigments in their powdered state is, for Klein, an important step in liberating painting (yet it is still considered to be a painting), and the goal is to reach a state far beyond what painting can achieve. It seems that Jo Hsieh also realized this concept, as she once mentioned that Non-Space must be depicted and presented in various languages, but as an artist, she could only express it through visual means. When she chose her powdered blue pigment, it was undoubtedly because only such purity and originality can point to the wholeness, the purity and the freedom of  Non-Space, with blue being the key to guiding people into this space.
Of course, Jo Hsieh manipulated color fields in different shapes and sizes. Like Matisse, another color magician obsessed with ultramarine, said: “One square centimeter of blue isn’t as blue as one square meter of the same blue.” Different sizes of blue can provide different levels of visual stimulation and different sensations for viewers. 

　Jo Hsieh was also good at blending various shades of blue pigments to create the illusion of light, shadow and depth. Her skillful manipulations fully enriched the power of blue, allowing it to expand into infinite space. In spite of being retained on the canvas, it can still break through the frame, passing freely into the exhibition space, infiltrating the viewer's senses and consciousness, invoking a vast and deep spiritual realm to bring about a peaceful mood and even an awareness of time and timeless. Whether or not Jo Hsieh’s Non-Space exists is dependent on the viewer’s spiritualism and sensibility. This process calls to mind the words Klein quoted from philosopher Bachelard at his 1958 exhibition, The Void:

 

First there is nothing, then there is a deep nothing, then there is a blue depth. 

References

Jo Hsieh, "Original, Source, Round". Taipei City: Chini Gallery, 2003. p. 16, 41, 44
Annie Ivanova, Jo-Hsieh: The Space Within in “Jo-Hsieh: Non-Space”, Taipei: Chini Gallery, 2003. P.24
Philippe Ball, Histoire vivante des couleurs, Paris, Hazan, 2010, p.10.
Pierre Ropert, “Yves Klein, au-dela du bleu”, https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/yves-klein-au-dela-du-bleu-6137778, 16/07/2023.
Jo Hsieh, Blue and All Its Creations in “Jo Hsieh: None-Space”. Taipei: Chini Gallery, 2003. P.16
Denys Riout, La peinture monochrome. Histoire et archéologie d’un genre, Gallimard, folio Essais, p.14.
Yves Klein, extrait de « L’aventure monochrome : l’épopée monochrome », 1960 ca. https://www.yvesklein.com/es/oeuvres/view/940/pigment-pur/, 20/07/2023. 
“D'abord, il n'y a rien, ensuite il y a un rien profond, puis une profondeur bleue.” voir Bachelard, L’air et les songes Essai sur l'imagination du mouvement, Paris, Corti. 1943, p. 20.