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Lot Essay
'Without the least learned discourse, without the support of any objective figuration, without inscribing the written trace of gesture, Yves KLEIN delivers you into his desired climate of the most immediate communicability with all the affective richness of colour: of one colour, a BLUE, a Blue in itself, disengaged from all functional justification.
'And it is certainly not a question of outbidding Mondrian or Malevich: Blue dominates, reigns, lives. It is the Blue-- King of the most definitive of surmounted frontiers, the Blue of the frescoes of Assisi. This full void, this nothing which encloses the Everything Possible, this supernatural asthenic silence of colour which finally, beyond anecdote and formal pretext, makes the immortal grandeur of a Giotto' (Restany, quoted in S. Stich, Yves Klein, Ostfildern 1994, p. 81).
So ran Pierre Restany's announcement for the momentous exhibition that took place in January 1957 at the Galleria Apollinaire in Milan; Yves Klein's Proposte monocrome, epoca blu. This exhibition consisted of eleven blue monochromes including IKB 234. The presence of eleven almost identical canvases-- they were all presented on the same scale of an identical colour-- caused a considerable stir in Milan. Some people denounced the exhibition as a joke or an insult, a claim that they felt was all the more justified because of Restany's comparisons to Giotto and Assisi, while others found in this gallery new answers to some of their own questions. For among the visitors were two Italian artists whose views were transformed and corroborated by what they saw there-- those artists were Lucio Fontana and Piero Manzoni.
Fontana would later comment that 'Klein is the one who understands the problem of space with his blue dimension. He is really abstract, one of the artists who have done something important' (Fontana, quoted in T. Trini, 'The last interview given by Fontana', pp.34-36, W. Beeren & N. Serota, Lucio Fontana, exh.cat., Amsterdam & London, 1988, p. 34). Klein had been producing monochrome works of art for some time by the time of this exhibition, but this was the first in which he displayed only works in what would now become his trademark colour, International Klein Blue, or IKB. This was a form of paint that he had developed, and indeed patented, that held pure pigment in a resin, allowing it to retain an intensity that oils seemed to diminish. The luminous IKB 234 glows with an almost spiritual quality that dovetails with Klein's own interest in and exploration of the Immaterial.
It was in 1948 in the South of France that, staring at the bright sky above him, Klein claimed that 'The blue sky is my first art work' (Klein, quoted in T. McEvilley, 'Yves Klein: Conquistador of the Void', pp. 19-87, Yves Klein 1928-1962: A Retrospective, exh.cat., Houston, 1982, p. 28). Although Klein would in the interim experiment with other colours and other artforms, it was to the Blue that he eventually returned and with which he would become most associated. His monochromes, initially painted in several colours, allowed Klein to capture his own notions of an absorbing pictorial space devoid of lines, which he saw as bars that hampered the freedom of his colours: 'It is colour which bathes in cosmic sensibility,' he explained. 'The line does not have the ability to impregnate, as colour does. The line cuts space... Colour impregnates it. Line rushes through infinity; colour just 'is' in infinity' (Klein, quoted in Ibid., p. 45).
It was with the monochrome that he made the greatest steps in his art, first in his 1954 booklet, Yves Peintures and subsequently the next year when his 'unicolour' painting Expression du monde de la couleur mine orange was refused by the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles on the basis that, without any lines or even a touch of another colour, it was not really an abstract painting. This, then, enhanced Klein's revulsion at the tyranny of the line. The next year, Klein was granted an exhibition at the gallery of Colette Allendy. There, he created an exhibition of variously coloured monochrome canvases that received some attention.
This 1956 exhibition presented Klein with new problems; he realised that the combination of these works had two disadvantages-- they became decorative through their juxtaposition with each other, and they also had different resonances for the different viewers, who came to compare each colour and to cite their own personal preferences. Klein realised that the solution was simple he took his trademark IKB and created an exhibition of works in that colour and all of the same size. Thus when IKB 234 and its sister works were exhibited in Milan, it truly was the dawning of the 'Epoca Blu.'
Klein's insistence that all the works were unique worlds in their own rights was emphasised by the fact that he ascribed a different price to each, prices which he claimed the viewers were willing to pay: 'The most sensational observation was from the 'buyers'. They chose among the eleven exhibited paintings, each in their own way, and each paid the requested price' (Klein, quoted in Stich, op.cit., 1994, p. 87). To the artist, this proved that
'Each of the blue propositions, all similar in appearance, were nevertheless recognized by the public as very different, one from the other. The amateur passed from one to the other as it suited him and penetrated the worlds of blue in a state of instantaneous contemplation. But each world of each painting, although the same blue and treated in the same way, presented a completely different essence and atmosphere. None resembled any other-- no more than pictorial moments of poetic moments resemble each other-- although all were of the same superior and subtle nature (marked by the immaterial)' (Klein, quoted in ibid., p. 86).
These works allowed the viewers to bathe in the infinite, in the luminous spiritual realm of the Blue. Influenced by his experiences of Judo, his interest in Rosicrucianism, his fascination with the age of the atomic, Klein had created paintings that have no frames and therefore no edges, and that are thus windows into the eternal and endless spiritual realm. Held on brackets in the Galleria Apollinaire, this sense of spatial self-sufficiency, of an apparition-like quality as this portal into the Immaterial appears before us, lent the IKBs an ephemeral yet potent visual impact. They were little sections of the blue sky, harnessed before the viewer. IKB 234 is an absorbing glimpse of another dimension, sucking in the viewer and allowing us to bask in a new understanding of the mysterious powers at work in the world: 'What is blue? Blue is the invisible becoming visible... Blue has no dimensions. It exists outside the dimensions that are part of other colours' (Klein, quoted in Yves Klein, O. Berggruen, M. Hollein, I. Pfeiffer (ed.), exh. cat., Ostfildern-Ruit 2004, p. 48).
'And it is certainly not a question of outbidding Mondrian or Malevich: Blue dominates, reigns, lives. It is the Blue-- King of the most definitive of surmounted frontiers, the Blue of the frescoes of Assisi. This full void, this nothing which encloses the Everything Possible, this supernatural asthenic silence of colour which finally, beyond anecdote and formal pretext, makes the immortal grandeur of a Giotto' (Restany, quoted in S. Stich, Yves Klein, Ostfildern 1994, p. 81).
So ran Pierre Restany's announcement for the momentous exhibition that took place in January 1957 at the Galleria Apollinaire in Milan; Yves Klein's Proposte monocrome, epoca blu. This exhibition consisted of eleven blue monochromes including IKB 234. The presence of eleven almost identical canvases-- they were all presented on the same scale of an identical colour-- caused a considerable stir in Milan. Some people denounced the exhibition as a joke or an insult, a claim that they felt was all the more justified because of Restany's comparisons to Giotto and Assisi, while others found in this gallery new answers to some of their own questions. For among the visitors were two Italian artists whose views were transformed and corroborated by what they saw there-- those artists were Lucio Fontana and Piero Manzoni.
Fontana would later comment that 'Klein is the one who understands the problem of space with his blue dimension. He is really abstract, one of the artists who have done something important' (Fontana, quoted in T. Trini, 'The last interview given by Fontana', pp.34-36, W. Beeren & N. Serota, Lucio Fontana, exh.cat., Amsterdam & London, 1988, p. 34). Klein had been producing monochrome works of art for some time by the time of this exhibition, but this was the first in which he displayed only works in what would now become his trademark colour, International Klein Blue, or IKB. This was a form of paint that he had developed, and indeed patented, that held pure pigment in a resin, allowing it to retain an intensity that oils seemed to diminish. The luminous IKB 234 glows with an almost spiritual quality that dovetails with Klein's own interest in and exploration of the Immaterial.
It was in 1948 in the South of France that, staring at the bright sky above him, Klein claimed that 'The blue sky is my first art work' (Klein, quoted in T. McEvilley, 'Yves Klein: Conquistador of the Void', pp. 19-87, Yves Klein 1928-1962: A Retrospective, exh.cat., Houston, 1982, p. 28). Although Klein would in the interim experiment with other colours and other artforms, it was to the Blue that he eventually returned and with which he would become most associated. His monochromes, initially painted in several colours, allowed Klein to capture his own notions of an absorbing pictorial space devoid of lines, which he saw as bars that hampered the freedom of his colours: 'It is colour which bathes in cosmic sensibility,' he explained. 'The line does not have the ability to impregnate, as colour does. The line cuts space... Colour impregnates it. Line rushes through infinity; colour just 'is' in infinity' (Klein, quoted in Ibid., p. 45).
It was with the monochrome that he made the greatest steps in his art, first in his 1954 booklet, Yves Peintures and subsequently the next year when his 'unicolour' painting Expression du monde de la couleur mine orange was refused by the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles on the basis that, without any lines or even a touch of another colour, it was not really an abstract painting. This, then, enhanced Klein's revulsion at the tyranny of the line. The next year, Klein was granted an exhibition at the gallery of Colette Allendy. There, he created an exhibition of variously coloured monochrome canvases that received some attention.
This 1956 exhibition presented Klein with new problems; he realised that the combination of these works had two disadvantages-- they became decorative through their juxtaposition with each other, and they also had different resonances for the different viewers, who came to compare each colour and to cite their own personal preferences. Klein realised that the solution was simple he took his trademark IKB and created an exhibition of works in that colour and all of the same size. Thus when IKB 234 and its sister works were exhibited in Milan, it truly was the dawning of the 'Epoca Blu.'
Klein's insistence that all the works were unique worlds in their own rights was emphasised by the fact that he ascribed a different price to each, prices which he claimed the viewers were willing to pay: 'The most sensational observation was from the 'buyers'. They chose among the eleven exhibited paintings, each in their own way, and each paid the requested price' (Klein, quoted in Stich, op.cit., 1994, p. 87). To the artist, this proved that
'Each of the blue propositions, all similar in appearance, were nevertheless recognized by the public as very different, one from the other. The amateur passed from one to the other as it suited him and penetrated the worlds of blue in a state of instantaneous contemplation. But each world of each painting, although the same blue and treated in the same way, presented a completely different essence and atmosphere. None resembled any other-- no more than pictorial moments of poetic moments resemble each other-- although all were of the same superior and subtle nature (marked by the immaterial)' (Klein, quoted in ibid., p. 86).
These works allowed the viewers to bathe in the infinite, in the luminous spiritual realm of the Blue. Influenced by his experiences of Judo, his interest in Rosicrucianism, his fascination with the age of the atomic, Klein had created paintings that have no frames and therefore no edges, and that are thus windows into the eternal and endless spiritual realm. Held on brackets in the Galleria Apollinaire, this sense of spatial self-sufficiency, of an apparition-like quality as this portal into the Immaterial appears before us, lent the IKBs an ephemeral yet potent visual impact. They were little sections of the blue sky, harnessed before the viewer. IKB 234 is an absorbing glimpse of another dimension, sucking in the viewer and allowing us to bask in a new understanding of the mysterious powers at work in the world: 'What is blue? Blue is the invisible becoming visible... Blue has no dimensions. It exists outside the dimensions that are part of other colours' (Klein, quoted in Yves Klein, O. Berggruen, M. Hollein, I. Pfeiffer (ed.), exh. cat., Ostfildern-Ruit 2004, p. 48).