Yves Klein: IKB 191 (1962)
Portrait of the artist by Charles Wilp / BPK Berlin (1961)
Considered today a major figure in post-War European art, Yves Klein memorably expressed his nouveau réalisme in a series of brightly-coloured monochromes exhibited in Paris during the mid-1950s.
Unfortunately, the public response to these canvases was not what he'd hoped for - it was mistakenly believed he was offering a new form of abstract interior decoration. Annoyed and disappointed by this, Klein decided a further - more radical - step in the direction of monochromatic painting was required. Thus, dispensing with red and yellow, he decided to work exclusively with one primary colour alone: blue.
It was a fateful decision - and the right decision. For his next exhibition, Proposte Monocrome: Epoca Blu (Milan, Jan. 1957), featuring eleven identical blue canvases attached to poles rather than hung on the walls in order to give a greater sense of spatial ambiguity, was a huge critical and commercial success, eventually travelling to Paris, Düsseldorf and London.
Key to its success was the fact that Klein didn't use just any old blue paint; rather, he went for ultramarine pigment suspended in a synthetic resin of his own devising that he called (rather cryptically) The Medium. The latter helped retain the full brilliance of the pigment and the resultant colour on canvas had all the magical intensity of the lapis lazuli used by medieval artists to paint the Madonna's blue robes.
Klein registered his unique paint formula in order to protect the authenticity of the pure idea and proudly gave the world a brand new blue: International Klein Blue (IKB).
From this time on, the blueness of Klein's works was no longer just a component; it was, rather, the very essence of his art and he used IKB not only in the production of conventional canvases, but in his sculptural work - see, for example, Vénus Bleue (1962) - and in his performance art (Klein had a penchant for covering the naked bodies of young models with IKB and having them squirm around or dragged across blank canvases like living brushes - a technique he termed anthropometry but which many WAM enthusiasts know and love as sploshing).
Ultimately, we might best view Klein as a kind of perverse mystic. Someone for whom art was a means of both transforming and transcending the world; of entering that fourth dimensional realm that D. H. Lawrence also describes in terms of its blissful blueness and names the Greater Day, but which Klein simply calls le Vide.
This Zen-inspired concept of the Void refers to a kind of noumenal zone in which real objects sparkle darkly as things in themselves beyond representation. Klein wants his audience to be aware of objects in their invisibility and their absence. The blue monochromes were thus a visual analogue for the Void itself, a view he found support for in the philosophy of Gaston Bachelard who famously wrote:
First there is nothing, next there is a depth of nothingness, then a profundity of blue ...
Note: those interested in knowing more about Yves Klein's anthropometry can click here to access a short film on the Tate website that includes footage from a performance and a recent interview with one of his models, Elena Palumbo-Mosca.
Unfortunately, the public response to these canvases was not what he'd hoped for - it was mistakenly believed he was offering a new form of abstract interior decoration. Annoyed and disappointed by this, Klein decided a further - more radical - step in the direction of monochromatic painting was required. Thus, dispensing with red and yellow, he decided to work exclusively with one primary colour alone: blue.
It was a fateful decision - and the right decision. For his next exhibition, Proposte Monocrome: Epoca Blu (Milan, Jan. 1957), featuring eleven identical blue canvases attached to poles rather than hung on the walls in order to give a greater sense of spatial ambiguity, was a huge critical and commercial success, eventually travelling to Paris, Düsseldorf and London.
Key to its success was the fact that Klein didn't use just any old blue paint; rather, he went for ultramarine pigment suspended in a synthetic resin of his own devising that he called (rather cryptically) The Medium. The latter helped retain the full brilliance of the pigment and the resultant colour on canvas had all the magical intensity of the lapis lazuli used by medieval artists to paint the Madonna's blue robes.
Klein registered his unique paint formula in order to protect the authenticity of the pure idea and proudly gave the world a brand new blue: International Klein Blue (IKB).
From this time on, the blueness of Klein's works was no longer just a component; it was, rather, the very essence of his art and he used IKB not only in the production of conventional canvases, but in his sculptural work - see, for example, Vénus Bleue (1962) - and in his performance art (Klein had a penchant for covering the naked bodies of young models with IKB and having them squirm around or dragged across blank canvases like living brushes - a technique he termed anthropometry but which many WAM enthusiasts know and love as sploshing).
Ultimately, we might best view Klein as a kind of perverse mystic. Someone for whom art was a means of both transforming and transcending the world; of entering that fourth dimensional realm that D. H. Lawrence also describes in terms of its blissful blueness and names the Greater Day, but which Klein simply calls le Vide.
This Zen-inspired concept of the Void refers to a kind of noumenal zone in which real objects sparkle darkly as things in themselves beyond representation. Klein wants his audience to be aware of objects in their invisibility and their absence. The blue monochromes were thus a visual analogue for the Void itself, a view he found support for in the philosophy of Gaston Bachelard who famously wrote:
First there is nothing, next there is a depth of nothingness, then a profundity of blue ...
Note: those interested in knowing more about Yves Klein's anthropometry can click here to access a short film on the Tate website that includes footage from a performance and a recent interview with one of his models, Elena Palumbo-Mosca.
