Jefferson McCarthy Artist Response 2015

Yves Klein

Yves was a French Artist who worked in the post-war era of European art. He was also a leader and founder of Nouveau réalisme (new realism), a movement founded on the basis of a "collective singularity" amongst artists. Yves focused primarily on abstract painting, performance art, and installation art. He is generally associated with his use of the color Ultramarine Blue. 

The major motifs of Klein's work are the infinite and the immaterial. There is a heavy focus on presenting ideas of freedom through space, color, and movement. Klein resonated with expression that was independent of objects. The abstract ideas he communicates are often times accompanied by immediately recognizable themes, like religion, or images meant to evoke nature. This reflects his desire to create universal works that are open to interpretation.

The predominant feature of Klein's work is color. Klein uses monochromes and large empty spaces of color as a mean for presenting his ideas about boundlessness and the role of art as a facilitator of freedom. In creating a mass of color without lines or figures, the viewer can do whatever they want with it. He frequently used blue as a representation of the cosmic energy surrounding the earth. The shade of Blue he used was a pigment that he developed with a chemist, and subsequently named International Klein Blue (IKB). He used other colors as well, most notably, gold, and orange.

Another medium of expression that Klein used was performance art. Anthropométries is a series of paintings created with IKB and “live” brushes. A group of nude female models would cover their bodies in paint and press themselves against a canvas, creating a flattened image of the thighs, torso, and breasts. The idea came to Klein when he noticed the imprints left on mats by judo wrestlers (Klein was a master Judo artist). He uses these images of pure color to convey the essential mass of the universe. The sexual images are not lascivious, but insightful. They stand for the “health that brings humans into being”. (Klein). Some Feminists have criticized his process on the basis that his conduction of the female model is a power dynamic.

            Klein continued working with the concepts in Anthropométries to create his fire paintings. The Fire paintings were a series of images created by pressing fire against paper with models wearing flame retardant suits.

            Klein’s sculptural work also focused heavily on his cosmic blue pigment. One particular series, Sponge Sculptures, is a collection of different sponges died with the same blue pigment. Each sponge represents the viewer after they have looked into the monochromes, and become engulfed in sensibility.

             I resonate with Klein’s use of color. Color is the focus and subject of all his works, because he believed that color was a force that encompassed the human experience. My work deals less with the cosmic influence of color and more with the personal affects that color leaves behind.