A Year in Blue and Green

"Blue became my favorite color as soon as I laid eyes upon that most reproduced of artworks: Hokusai's "The Great Wave off Kanagawa," a framed poster of which still hangs in my grandmother's room. Maybe you grew up with a print of this piece somewhere in your home, too. Over the last 12 months though, as blue as they've been, I find myself drawn more and more to the green that hooks my eye: the brushstrokes behind enthralled ballet dancers in British artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye's " Harp-Strum" (2016), the shifting fabric in Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka's 1931 "Young Woman in Green" and the candy paint of the Bugatti in her 1929 self-portrait, the phthalo green skin of Byron Kim's '90s Belly Painting series."

"But color is also an entrypoint - a way of changing how I see. Working with the many critics, artists, authors, and poets who have contributed to Hyperallergic this year, particularly our Opinion and Books sections, has required me to wipe my lens clean and reframe my thinking. That's one of the gifts of editing; I love to learn and unlearn as I go along. And this year, I got to work on pieces that did what we in the arts are called to do - to respond and speak out. In New York City, artist Caitlin MacBride eulogized Kremer's, a beloved and vital pigment shop that closed its physical storefront after three decades due, in part, to the Trump administration's tariff policies. She describes how perusing its shelves became a meditative part of making art, grounding the process in tactility and sensation from the beginning."

Blue initially dominated attention via Hokusai's The Great Wave off Kanagawa, forming early visual memory. Over the past year, green became more compelling through works by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Tamara de Lempicka, and Byron Kim. Color functions as an entrypoint and a means of changing perception. Collaborative work with critics, artists, authors, and poets required reframing and unlearning; editing facilitated that process. Artistic responses engaged contemporary issues, including the closure of Kremer's pigment shop after tariff pressures, and emphasized how material engagement—perusing pigment shelves—grounds artmaking through tactility and sensation.

Read at Hyperallergic