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Lot Essay
"I seek to put the spectator in front of the fact that colour is an individual, a character, a personality. I solicit a receptivity from the observer placed before my works. This permits him to consider everything that effectively surrounds the monochrome painting. Thus he can impregnate himself with colour and colour impregnates itself in him. Thus, perhaps, can he enter into the world of colour" (Klein quote d in S. Stich, Yves Klein, Cologne 1994, p. 66).
Yves Klein's monochromes were the first and purest expressions of his concept of a 'zone of immateriality' - a mystic void that he believed existed beyond the confines of conventional notions of time and space. Klein believed man had a kind of sixth sense - an innate sensibility to this mystic zone - that could be stimulated by colour. Through the monochrome colour of his these paintings he hoped to provoke an awareness in the viewer of the profound reality of this void. For Klein the realm of the 'immaterial' not only lay outside of man's conventional wisdom but was to be the arena of his future. Believing the third millennium would herald a new spiritual age in which the artist as creator would develop a pure freedom within which to interact with this spiritual dimension, he sought through his own creativity to develop man's awareness to the void and to his enormous creative potential.
Klein's mystic beliefs came from a fusion of his awareness of Eastern philosophy (Klein had spent a year in Japan learning to master the higher disciplines of the martial art of Judo) and from his keen following of the gnostic principles of the Rosicrucians whom he had first read about in 1949 in Max Heindel's book La Cosmologie des Rose-Croix. In this book a predominantly alchemical theory of the world is proposed that interprets the universe as consisting solely of primal energy. All space and all matter is infused with such energy. Matter is essentially confined or bound energy while spatial energy is limitless and free. The artist - through the freedom of his mind - can crystallize the boundless free energy of space and materialise it into a form that resonates with the energy of infinite space. Not only do Klein's monochromes do precisely this, but they visibly demonstrate the process of their materialisation by being very nearly immaterial themselves.
Having settled on pure colour as the immaterial medium through which he hoped to 'impregnate' the viewer with a sense of the mystic, Klein selected blue amongst all the colours to be the material vehicle through which to express the immaterial void. It was an inevitable choice given that Klein had grown up on the Mediterranean coast in Nice. Of all the colours, Klein considered blue to be the least material and the most infused with a sense of the infinite, being the colour of the sky and of the sea.
In the application of blue however Klein wanted to avoid there being any visible sense of surface to his works. They should have no edge and should reveal no brushstrokes, for his monochromes were not to be conceived of as paintings nor as windows but as materialisations of the void. Klein solved these problems by softening the edges and corners of the paintings and by using pigment instead of paint. Pure pigment had an ethereal quality that fitted Klein's purpose perfectly It seemed like materialised colour and when applied to a surface blended with it leaving no visible trace of the manner its application. In doing so it maintained the intensity and radiance of its colour - something that Klein found was often lost when pigment was mixed with most binding agents.
In order to further stimulate the viewer's sensibility Klein sought a pure tone of blue that would radiate with an intensity appropriate for the mystic energy it contained. After much experiment he devised the purest and most intense shade of blue he could and had the new colour officially patented in his name. The colour was called 'International Klein Blue' and because they were physical manifestations of this colour it is was by this name that he titled his monochrome paintings.
IKB 77 is one of the very first of Klein's monochromes. Executed in 1955 it is a large monolithic blue monochrome made at a time when Klein was making monochrome paintings in a range of colours, that he hoped would each individually induce different moods of contemplation. Klein soon abandoned this practice after his first major exhibition at the Galerie Colette Allendy in 1955 preferring to concentrate solely on the more intense and mystical (IKB) blue monochromes. He abandoned other colours because, as he later recalled in a lecture on the monochrome idea, he had found that 'the public...when presented with all those surfaces of different colours on the walls' became 'enslaved by visual habit' and 'reassembled (each work) as components of some polychromatic decoration'. They could not, Klein observed, "enter into the contemplation of the colour of a single painting at a time, and that was very disappointing to me, because I precisely and categorically refuse to create on one surface even the interplay of two colours...In my judgement two colours juxtaposed on one canvas compel the observer to see the spectacle of this juxtaposition of two colours, or of their perfect accord, but prevent him from entering into the sensitivity, the dominance, the purpose of the picture" (Klein, 'Lecture at the Sorbonne', 1959, reproduced in C. Harrison and P. Wood, (eds.) Art in Theory 1900-1990, Oxford 1993, pp. 803-5).
Multiple colours not only represented a distraction for Klein, but they were also reminiscent of the frenetic modern world of multiple imagery that he hoped his monochromes would provide a spiritual alternative to. As Pierre Restany elaborated in the flowery prose of his introduction to this first exhibition of Klein's early monochromes, Klein's monochromes were a spiritual retreat from the hurly-burly and artifice of modern life. "Timeless, autonomous, strictly objective, universal 'propositions'", they "offered a very enriching cure of asthenic silence for all those intoxicated by the machine and the big city, to those frenzied by rhythm and masturbated by reality" (P. Restany, 'La minute de verité', in Yves: Propositions monochromes, Galerie Colette Andy, 1956).
For Klein, the monochrome, neither painting nor object, was "an idea of the absolute unity in perfect serenity; an abstract idea represented in an abstract manner, which has made me place myself on the side of the abstract painters." "I quickly point out." he added, "that the abstracts themselves do not understand it this way and reproach me among other things for refusing to provoke colour relations" (Klein, text for the exhibition Yves Peintures, Club des Solitaires, October 1955).
Yves Klein's monochromes were the first and purest expressions of his concept of a 'zone of immateriality' - a mystic void that he believed existed beyond the confines of conventional notions of time and space. Klein believed man had a kind of sixth sense - an innate sensibility to this mystic zone - that could be stimulated by colour. Through the monochrome colour of his these paintings he hoped to provoke an awareness in the viewer of the profound reality of this void. For Klein the realm of the 'immaterial' not only lay outside of man's conventional wisdom but was to be the arena of his future. Believing the third millennium would herald a new spiritual age in which the artist as creator would develop a pure freedom within which to interact with this spiritual dimension, he sought through his own creativity to develop man's awareness to the void and to his enormous creative potential.
Klein's mystic beliefs came from a fusion of his awareness of Eastern philosophy (Klein had spent a year in Japan learning to master the higher disciplines of the martial art of Judo) and from his keen following of the gnostic principles of the Rosicrucians whom he had first read about in 1949 in Max Heindel's book La Cosmologie des Rose-Croix. In this book a predominantly alchemical theory of the world is proposed that interprets the universe as consisting solely of primal energy. All space and all matter is infused with such energy. Matter is essentially confined or bound energy while spatial energy is limitless and free. The artist - through the freedom of his mind - can crystallize the boundless free energy of space and materialise it into a form that resonates with the energy of infinite space. Not only do Klein's monochromes do precisely this, but they visibly demonstrate the process of their materialisation by being very nearly immaterial themselves.
Having settled on pure colour as the immaterial medium through which he hoped to 'impregnate' the viewer with a sense of the mystic, Klein selected blue amongst all the colours to be the material vehicle through which to express the immaterial void. It was an inevitable choice given that Klein had grown up on the Mediterranean coast in Nice. Of all the colours, Klein considered blue to be the least material and the most infused with a sense of the infinite, being the colour of the sky and of the sea.
In the application of blue however Klein wanted to avoid there being any visible sense of surface to his works. They should have no edge and should reveal no brushstrokes, for his monochromes were not to be conceived of as paintings nor as windows but as materialisations of the void. Klein solved these problems by softening the edges and corners of the paintings and by using pigment instead of paint. Pure pigment had an ethereal quality that fitted Klein's purpose perfectly It seemed like materialised colour and when applied to a surface blended with it leaving no visible trace of the manner its application. In doing so it maintained the intensity and radiance of its colour - something that Klein found was often lost when pigment was mixed with most binding agents.
In order to further stimulate the viewer's sensibility Klein sought a pure tone of blue that would radiate with an intensity appropriate for the mystic energy it contained. After much experiment he devised the purest and most intense shade of blue he could and had the new colour officially patented in his name. The colour was called 'International Klein Blue' and because they were physical manifestations of this colour it is was by this name that he titled his monochrome paintings.
IKB 77 is one of the very first of Klein's monochromes. Executed in 1955 it is a large monolithic blue monochrome made at a time when Klein was making monochrome paintings in a range of colours, that he hoped would each individually induce different moods of contemplation. Klein soon abandoned this practice after his first major exhibition at the Galerie Colette Allendy in 1955 preferring to concentrate solely on the more intense and mystical (IKB) blue monochromes. He abandoned other colours because, as he later recalled in a lecture on the monochrome idea, he had found that 'the public...when presented with all those surfaces of different colours on the walls' became 'enslaved by visual habit' and 'reassembled (each work) as components of some polychromatic decoration'. They could not, Klein observed, "enter into the contemplation of the colour of a single painting at a time, and that was very disappointing to me, because I precisely and categorically refuse to create on one surface even the interplay of two colours...In my judgement two colours juxtaposed on one canvas compel the observer to see the spectacle of this juxtaposition of two colours, or of their perfect accord, but prevent him from entering into the sensitivity, the dominance, the purpose of the picture" (Klein, 'Lecture at the Sorbonne', 1959, reproduced in C. Harrison and P. Wood, (eds.) Art in Theory 1900-1990, Oxford 1993, pp. 803-5).
Multiple colours not only represented a distraction for Klein, but they were also reminiscent of the frenetic modern world of multiple imagery that he hoped his monochromes would provide a spiritual alternative to. As Pierre Restany elaborated in the flowery prose of his introduction to this first exhibition of Klein's early monochromes, Klein's monochromes were a spiritual retreat from the hurly-burly and artifice of modern life. "Timeless, autonomous, strictly objective, universal 'propositions'", they "offered a very enriching cure of asthenic silence for all those intoxicated by the machine and the big city, to those frenzied by rhythm and masturbated by reality" (P. Restany, 'La minute de verité', in Yves: Propositions monochromes, Galerie Colette Andy, 1956).
For Klein, the monochrome, neither painting nor object, was "an idea of the absolute unity in perfect serenity; an abstract idea represented in an abstract manner, which has made me place myself on the side of the abstract painters." "I quickly point out." he added, "that the abstracts themselves do not understand it this way and reproach me among other things for refusing to provoke colour relations" (Klein, text for the exhibition Yves Peintures, Club des Solitaires, October 1955).