Everything about Yves Klein totally explained
Yves Klein (
28 April 1928 -
6 June 1962) was a
French artist and is considered an important figure in post-war European art. New York critics of Klein's time classify him as
neo-Dada, but other critics, such as
Thomas McEvilley in an essay submitted to
Artforum in 1982, have since classified Klein as an early, though "enigmatic," Post-Modernist.
Biography
Klein was born in
Nice, in the
Alpes-Maritimes department of
France. His parents,
Fred Klein
and Marie Raymond, were both
painters. From 1942 to 1946, Klein studied at the École Nationale de la Marine Marchande and the École Nationale des Langues Orientales and began practicing
judo. At this time, he became friends with
Arman Fernandez and Claude Pascal and started to paint. Klein composed his first Symphonie monotone in 1947. During the years 1948 to 1952, he traveled to Italy, Great Britain, Spain, and Japan. In Japan, he became a master (4th dan) at judo. In 1955, Klein settled permanently in
Paris, where he was given a solo exhibition at the Club des Solitaires. His monochrome paintings were shown at the Galerie Colette Allendy and
Galerie Iris Clert in Paris, in 1956. In 1960 he founded the
New Realism movement along with art critic
Pierre Restany. Klein died in Paris of a
heart attack in 1962 at the age of 34, shortly before the birth of
his son.
Artwork
Monochrome works
Many of his early
paintings were monochrome and in a variety of colours. By the late 1950s, Klein's monochrome works were almost exclusively in a deep
blue hue which he eventually patented as
International Klein Blue (IKB, =PB29, =CI 77007), although the colour was never produced commercially.
As well as conventionally made paintings, in a number of works Klein had naked female models covered in blue paint dragged across or laid upon canvases to make the image, using the models as "living brushes". This type of work he called
Anthropometry. Other paintings in this method of production include "recordings" of rain that Klein made by driving around in the rain at 70 miles per hour with a canvas tied to the roof of his car, and canvases with patterns of soot created by scorching the canvas with gas burners.
Klein and
Arman were continually involved with each other creatively, both as
Nouveaux Réalistes and as friends. Both from Nice, the two worked together for many years and Arman even named his son,
Yves Arman after Yves Klein who was his god-father.
Sometimes the creation of these paintings was turned into a kind of
performance art—an event in
1960, for example, had an audience dressed in formal evening wear watching the models go about their task while an instrumental ensemble played Klein's
1949 The Monotone Symphony, which consisted of a single sustained chord.
Along works by Andy Warhol and Willem De Kooning, Yves Klein's painting RE 46 (1960) was among the top-five sellers at Christie's Post-War and Contemporary Art sale in May 2006. His monochromatic blue sponge painting sold for $4,720,000. Previously, his painting RE I (1958) had sold for $6,716,000 at Christie's New York in November 2000.
Immaterial works
In another act that became known as an Yves Klein artwork, he offered and managed to sell empty spaces in the city in exchange for
gold. He wanted his buyers to experience The Void by selling them empty space. In his view this experience could only be paid for in the purest material: gold. In order to restore the "natural order" that he'd unbalanced by selling the empty space (that was now not "empty" anymore), Klein threw the gold into the river
Seine.
Aero works
Klein is also well known for a
photograph,
Saut dans le vide (
Leap into the Void)
(External Link), which apparently shows him jumping off a wall, arms outstretched, towards the pavement. Klein used the photograph as evidence of his ability to undertake unaided lunar travel. In fact, "Saut dans le vide" was published as part of a broadside on the part of Klein (the "artist of space") denouncing NASA's own lunar expeditions as hubris and folly.
Klein's work revolved around a
Zen-influenced concept he came to describe as "le Vide" or in English: the Void. Klein's Void is a nirvana-like state that's void of worldly influences; a neutral zone where one is inspired to pay attention to ones own sensibilities, and to "reality" as opposed to "representation". Klein presented his work in forms that were recognized as art - paintings, a book, a musical composition - but then would take away the expected content of that form (paintings without pictures, a book without words, a musical composition without in fact composition) leaving only a shell, as it were. In this way he tried to create for the audience his "Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility".
Instead of representing objects in a subjective, artistic way, Klein wanted his subjects to be represented by their imprint: the image of their absence.
Klein's work strongly refers to a theoretical/arthistorical context as well as to philosophy/metaphysics and with his work he aimed to combine these. He tried to make his audience experience a state where an idea could simultaneously be "felt" as well as "understood".
Further Information
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