• Geoffrey Hendricks, SKY POST CARD #7, n.d.; postcard: color photo offset; 3 1/4 x 4 1/4 in.; BAMPFA, gift of Alice Hutchins.

Five Tables of the Color Blue

Blue skies, blueprints, blue jeans, blue states, blue suede shoes, the blues. It’s a lot for a color to cover, but blue is cool with it, helped by the discovery of the first chemical pigment in the eighteenth century, which turned blue in art from rare to ubiquitous. Works on view include Song dynasty tea bowls and Vietnamese blue-and-white shipwreck ware; an Indian painting of blue-skinned Krishna surrounded by adoring gopis (female cowherders); Fred Wilson’s blue-toned print X, which juxtaposes images of Malcolm X and Madame X; the clouds-and-light beauty of Geoffrey Hendricks’s SKY POST CARD #7, and more!