On the Color Blue "The color blue has a long social and intellectual history. The pigment was associated with wealth, beginning when the semiprecious stone lapis lazuli began to be mined in Afghanistan over three thousand years ago and exported across the ancient world at great expense. In ancient Egypt, blue could protect the dead against evil in the afterlife. Dark blue was widely used in the Byzantine empire to decorate churches: it symbolized the infinite expanse of the sky. However, a cheaper version of blue dye, woad, could be created from plants. For the Romans, blue dye was used to color the clothes of working people. It was also associated with barbarians and with mourning. In the art and life of the early Middle Ages across Europe, blue was used to color the garments of poor working people. It was not until the status of the Virgin Mary increased and her habit changed to the expensive hue ultramarine, created from lapis lazuli, that blue became associated with holiness. We are accustomed to understand the color blue as pointing toward the precious, the infinite, and the holy: a tangle of cultural associations from different sources that both Nelson and Jarman reference in their texts. But, as Wittgenstein points out, “Someone who speaks of the character of a colour is always thinking of just one particular way it is used” (Remarks 12e) - Parsons, Alexandra. "A Meditation on Color and the Body in Derek Jarman's Chroma and Maggie Nelson's Bluets." a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 33.2 (2018): 375-93. Web.