Synopses & Reviews
One of the last century's most influential artists, Yves Klein (1928-1962) took the European art scene by storm in a prolific career that lasted only from 1954 to 1962, when he suffered a heart attack at the age of 34. Klein was an innovator who embraced painting, sculpture, performance, photography, music, theater, film, architecture and theoretical writing. Self-identified as the painter of space, Klein sought to achieve immaterial spirituality through pure color (primarily an ultramarine blue of his own invention-International Klein Blue) and even went so far as to present white galleries emptied of all artworks for his renowned 1958 exhibition of the Void. His diverse oeuvre represents a pivotal transition from modern art's concern with the material object to contemporary notions of the conceptual nature of art.Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers is published to accompany the first major retrospective of the artist's work in the United States in nearly 30 years. It includes examples from all of Klein's major series, including his Anthropometries, Cosmogonies, fire paintings, planetary reliefs and blue monochromes, as well as selections of his lesser-known gold and pink monochromes, body and sponge reliefs, air architecture and immaterial works. Essays by curators Kerry Brougher and Philippe Vergne, Klein scholar Klaus Ottmann, art historian Kaira M. Cabanas and curatorial fellow Andria Hickey, as well as archival materials and translations of Klein's published and unpublished writings, offer insights into the artist's endeavors and process. Born in Nice, France, in 1928, Yves Klein created what he considered his first artwork when he signed the sky above Nice in 1947, making his earliest attempt to capture the immaterial. The artist carved out new aesthetic and theoretical territory based on his study of the mystical sect Rosicrucianism, philosophical and poetic investigations of space and science, and the practice of Judo, which he described as the discovery of the human body in a spiritual space.
Synopsis
Text by Kerry Brougher, Philippe Vergne, Klaus Ottmann, Kaira M. Cabanas, Andria Hickey.
Synopsis
Denounced as a charlatan and fêted as a mystic, French artist Yves Klein (192862) scandalized the art world with his enthusiastic embrace of postwar mass culture and his exploitation of controversial publicity tactics. Today, we know Yves Klein not only as one of the most radical artists of the postwar period, but also as an iconic role model for contemporary practiceshe reinvented abstract painting, conceived new horizons for performance art, and was a trailblazer in the realm of land, body, and conceptual art. In this new critical biography, Nuit Banai examines the relationship between Kleins brief life and his wide repertoire of artistic practices.
While surveying the artists life, Banai establishes that Kleins brilliance was, above all, performative, revealing that he created and inhabited myriad public identities: bourgeois, judo expert, painter, avant-garde artist, collaborator, politician, fascist, and showman, among others. With each persona, Banai shows, Klein invented new ways to communicate his paradoxical message of spiritual enlightenment and Dada iconoclasm to a rapt and unsuspecting audience. Illuminating the many facets of Kleins influential artistic career, Yves Klein is an invaluable introduction to the inventor of the inimitable International Klein Blue.
About the Author
Nuit Banai is an art historian, critic, and curator who teaches in the department of art history at the University of Vienna. She is a contributor to the catalog accompanying the Pompidou Centre Exhibition Yves Klein: Corps, Couleur, Immatériel in 2006-07and is a regular contributor to Artforum International magazine.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Klein the Paradox
1. Living on the Axis: Bourgeois and Bohemian, 1928-48
2. In Search of ‘Self: Becoming a Judoka/Artist, 1948-52
3. Assuming the Pose: Yves Klein Fourth Dan, 1952-4
4. ‘Painter, 1954-5
5. Avant-garde Artist, 1955-7
6. Charlatan, 1957-8
7. Collaborator, 1957-61
8. Middle-class Mystic, 1958-62
9. The Poet-politician: ‘The Blue Revolution, 1958-61
10. ‘The Flying Fascist, 1961
11. Showman, 1961-2
Kleins Afterlives
References
Select Bibliography
Acknowledgements