Culture

What you can't see

January 21, 2008
Placeholder image!

From the wikipedia page on International Klein Blue—a deep blue hue invented and patented in 1960 by the French artist Yves Klein as part of his search for colours which could themselves represent artistic concepts:

International Klein Blue is outside the gamut of computer displays, and can therefore not be accurately portrayed on this page.
Which makes this website all the more enigmatic in its intent; and usefully reminds us that, sometimes, if you haven't seen it in the flesh (so to speak), you haven't seen it at all.

Of course, as the philosopher Thomas Metzinger observes in "The Representational Deep Structure of Phenomenal Experience," even then you may not actually see it:
If we stay with the example of the famous colour International Klein Blue, for some nondualistic philosophers this would mean single molecules of Rhodopas, vinyl chloride, ethyl alcohol, and ethyl acetate (out of which the colour is made) themselves possess the colour of International Klein Blue. Other nondualistic philosophers would see themselves driven to the conclusion that a certain number of the nerve cells firing in our visual cortex while we are looking at one of Yves Klein's monochrome pictures are in fact International Klein Blue. Of course this assumption is absurd in both cases.
Come to that, are you sure you're even reading about it now?