ART “4”
“2”-DAY 06 June
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Died on 06 June 1944: Ker~Xavier Roussel,
French Nabi
painter, printmaker, and decorative artist, born on 10 December 1867. He
was the brother-in-law of Edouard
Vuillard. — {Etait-il un descendant de Guillaume “Cadet”
Roussel [30 Apr 1743 – 26 Jan 1807]? Ah ! Ah ! Ah oui, vraiment?
- En tout cas ce n'est pas lui, mais Benoit A. Côté qui, en
1996, a peint les
3 maisons de Cadet Roussel. (385x387pix, 65kb gif)} — While still at the Lycée Condorcet in Paris, he met Édouard Vuillard (whose sister Marie he married in 1893), Maurice Denis and Paul Sérusier; once they had finished their studies, they all went together to the Académie Julian, where Pierre Bonnard, Georges Lacombe, Paul Ranson, and Félix Valloton were already enrolled. Dissatisfied with the teaching of William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Jules Lefèbvre, they left the Académie in 1890, two years after they had begun to meet together as the Nabis. Roussel took part in the exhibitions at the Café Volpini in 1889 and the Le Barc de Boutteville gallery in 1891. At that time his pictures applied the rules of Synthetism outlined by Sérusier — flat planes of repeated color encircled by dark lines forming a harmonious rhythm; a typical example of his oil paintings of this period is Ma Grand-mère (1888). Like the other Nabis, he did not restrict himself to easel painting but also produced murals, stained glass and lithographs: the color lithograph L'éducation du chien, which he contributed to the anthology Amours (1892-1898) published by the dealer Ambroise Vollard, was the first of several such projects in which he developed the Symbolist character of his work. The 12 lithographs he contributed to another Vollard publication, Album de Paysages (Paris), vividly expressed the pantheist vision of nature that was to characterize his later work. — LINKS — Mythological Scene (1903, 47x62cm; 575x754pix, 192kb) — Rural Festival (1913; 575x408pix, 140kb) — Paul Cézanne au Travail sur le Chemin des Lauves (1906 print, 1131x1054pix, 488kb) _ looks like a black-and-white photo. |
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Died on 06 June 1962: Yves Klein,
French Conceptual painter, sculptor, performance artist, and writer, born
on 28 April 1928. — {Klein was not gross?} — He was the son of the Dutch-born painter Fred Klein [1898–], whose work was representational, and Marie Raymond [1908–], who developed a reputation in the 1950s as an abstract artist, and whose abstraction was influential on the development of her son’s work. Although Yves had had no formal art training, he was already making his first serious attempts at painting by 1946 and showing his interest in the absoluteness of color by formulating his first theories about monochrome. In 1946 he befriended Arman, with whom he was later to be associated in the Nouveau Réalisme movement, and the writer Claude Pascal, whom he met at a judo class. Together they developed their interest in esoteric writing and East Asian religions. Klein became a student of the Rosicrucian Fellowship in 1946 and was influenced both by its mystical philosophy and by judo. In 1952–1953 he went with Pascal and Arman to Japan, where he studied the art of judo and the spiritual attitude associated with it, gaining the black belt ‘fourth dan’ at the Kodokan Institute in Tokyo. He worked as a judo teacher in Madrid in 1954 and in Paris from 1955 to 1959. — Klein was born in Nice. From 1942 to 1946, he studied at the Ecole Nationale de la Marine Marchande and the Ecole 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. Yves Klein’s first passion in life was judo. In 1952 he moved to Tokyo and studied at the Kodokan Judo Institute, where he earned a black belt. When he returned to Paris in 1955 and discovered to his dismay that the Fédération Française de Judo did not extol him as a star, he shifted his attentions and pursued a secondary interest—a career in the arts. During the ensuing eight years Klein assembled a multifarious and critically complex body of work ranging from monochrome canvases and wall reliefs to paintings made with fire. He is renowned for his almost exclusive use of a strikingly resonant, powdery cobalt pigment, which he patented under the name “International Klein Blue,” claiming that it represented the physical manifestation of cosmic energy that, otherwise invisible, floats freely in the air. In addition to monochrome paintings, Klein applied this pigment to sponges, which he attached to canvases as relief elements or positioned on wire stands to create biomorphic or anthropomorphic sculptures. 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, Paris, in 1956. The artist entered his blue period in 1957; this year a double exhibition of his work was held at the Galerie Iris Clert and the Galerie Colette Allendy, both in Paris. In 1958, he began using nude models as “living paintbrushes.” Klein’s activities also included using nude female models drenched in paint as “brushes”; releasing thousands of blue balloons into the sky; and exhibiting an empty, white-walled room and then selling portions of the interior air, which he called “zones” of “immaterial pictorial sensibility.” His intentions remain perplexing 30 years after his sudden death. Whether Klein truly believed in the mystical capacity of the artist to capture cosmic particles in paint and to create aesthetic experiences out of thin air and then apportion them at whim is difficult to determine. The argument has also been made that he was essentially a parodist who mocked the metaphysical inclinations of many Modern painters, while making a travesty of the art market. Also in 1958, he undertook a project for the decoration of the entrance hall of the new opera house in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. The first manifesto of the group Nouveaux Réalistes was written in 1960 by Pierre Restany and signed by Arman, Klein, Daniel Spoerri, Jean Tinguely, and others. In 1961, Klein was given a retrospective at the Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld, Germany, and his first solo exhibition in the United States at the Leo Castelli Gallery, New York. He and architect Claude Parent collaborated that year on the design for fountains of water and fire, Les Fontaines de Varsovie, for the Palais de Chaillot, Paris. In 1962, Klein made a plaster cast of Arman and took part in the exhibition Antagonismes 2: L’Objet at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris. Shortly before his death he appeared in the film Mondo Cane (1962). — Text of Klein's Chelsea Hotel Manifesto. — LINKS –- IKB 92 (869x700pix, 22kb) _ The pseudonymous Onyva Gewaltig has transformed this almost featureless expanse of a single hue into the multicolored symmetrical super-abstraction _ I Kolor Better Than Ninety-Two Small Ivys aka Gibe Big (2006; screen filling, 310kb _ ZOOM to 1864x2636pix, 2095kb). Also, to save you from feeling blue from looking at one after another of Klein's boring blue rectangles, Gewaltig has combined nine of them into the super-boring _ Beaucoup de Blouses Bleues Barbantes (708x1000pix, 48kb _ ZOOM to 1864x2636pix, 368kb) –- Untitled (883x738pix, 70kb) blue, pitted. –- Untitled (IKB 114) (881x325pix, 18kb) _ By extremely intensifying the contrast, and changing the color appropriately, Gewaltig has created the tricolor _ Drap-Pot-Franc-C'est aka I blew Kwhite Bred (2006; screen filling, 269kb _ ZOOM to 1864x2636pix, 2016kb). –- Untitled (833x695pix, 44kb) blue, wrinkled. –- IKB 159 (in one image two blue rectangles slightly smeared, 577x444pix and 577x417pix, together 20kb) –- Triptique (689x1575pix, 72kb) –- Ant 44 (900x618pix, 58kb) –- Ant 23 (1960; 900x540pix, 38kb) –- RE 40 (1960, 200x165cm; 790x650pix, 45kb) _ For this non-art, $3'256'000 was paid at Sotheby's 09 November 2004 auction by a greater fool who must have believed the following kind of nonsense (which this web site does not endorse): RE 40 is a stunning example of Yves Klein’s rare series of Relief Eponges. These sensuously, evocative surfaces provide the viewer with shining examples of Klein’s deeply philosophical investigation into matters of space and form seen through the glass of pure color. Klein’s previous experiments with the monochrome surface (particularly his IKB paintings from 1956-1960) are now enlivened and plasticized through the addition of pigmented sponges to the surface, lending the work an articulated relief. The viewer is thus treated to a stunning drama of palpable and spatial form within the theatre of saturated color. In both its size and stature, RE 40 remains one of the most important examples of this series: a dramatic synthesis of the sensual anthropomorphism of organic mass with an almost Baroque elegance of Klein’s signature color. More than just ‘creative’, Klein saw the act and art of painting as ‘procreative’. He considered his own paintings to be ‘living autonomous presences’ that ‘create atmospheres’ and ‘sensitive climates’. Indeed, the very tactile qualities of RE 40 afford a number of effects, suggestive of the seabed or the landscape of some unknown planet. Klein’s own notes from around this time show that he was inspired by space travel, and this work was executed the year before Yuri Gagarin would take the first manned space flight. Indeed, the lunar quality of the surface, together with a sense of the mystical and ethereal that is imbued in RE 40, suggest as much. The procreative, rather than creative impetus of Klein’s artistic vision is confirmed when one considers the artist’s thoughts about color. In his L’Aventure Monochrome of 1957 the artist wrote that “For me colors are living beings … [they] are the true inhabitants of space … there are myriads of nuances of all colors, each with its particular worth.” These ‘myriad of nuances’ lend RE 40 an expansive power and vital serenity. Like a divinely cultivated Zen garden, the deliberate composition combines a delicate balance of monochromatic quietude with a dynamic protrusion into real space. Whilst each sponge has its own ‘autonomous life’, they all work in concert with each other, playing out their individual roles within the drama of the whole painting. They erotically undulate over the rich landscape, appearing to levitate above the highly-worked surface. In essence, Klein here expands the traditional boundaries of pictorial space, creating a painting that captivates our gaze, but also questions the dynamics of that gaze. Klein’s genius is to compel the viewer to consider not only why one looks at a painting, but also how. Klein’s interest in process connects him to a number of other artists, all of whom were making similar investigations in the realm of ‘making’. One finds a nexus between Klein’s Relief Eponges and Jasper Johns' meticulous use of encaustic; Claes Oldenburg's soft sculptures; Lucio Fontana's ruptured canvases and Piero Manzoni’s pleated canvases soaked in kaolin. All of these pioneers carved a niche for themselves and their processes of expression and execution within deeply iconoclastic territory: all the visual experiments Klein made were executed at a time when the Image still remained a concrete symbol and idea (no Image would have meant no Pop Art, for example). Klein opened up the possibility of painting images of ‘nothingness’ (an idea which finds its logical conclusion in his ‘display’ of empty gallery spaces, and his creation of art by throwing gold leaf into the air). Having ‘invented’ his signature deep ultra-marine blue four years prior, he patented International Klein Blue in May 1960, with all the spectacular theatrics appropriate to the discovery of a new aesthetic. Anchored in his deeply-held belief that aesthetic experience could release the individual from the confines of the worldly, Klein's art would aim to surpass even form itself; he wrote:“What appears is separated from form and becomes immediacy”. The work of Yves Klein thus presents one of the most provocative paradoxes in postwar art: aspiring to overcome all barriers to ‘total physical and spiritual freedom’, it is also one of the purest experiments in form of its time. Relinquishing variations in color as he had earlier revoked line, Klein purifies painting of its conventional attributes only to render the monochrome as a realm for ceaseless experimentation. Klein began to include sponges on the surface of his paintings - as opposed to using sponges, which he chose with fanatical precision from suppliers in Greece and Tunisia, to apply paint to his surfaces - when he began working on a commission from a new theater in Gelsenkirchen, in Germany's Ruhr valley in 1958-1959. Gelsenkirchen's vast window-lined auditorium, entered around a glass-enclosed rotunda, was the perfect site for an artist obsessed with the elements of space and light, and the possibilities they hold for a transformative experience. RE 40 is one of the most restrained, gorgeous examples of Klein's austere art. With its irregular pattern of sponges interrupting the otherwise seamless blue canvas, it alludes to the fantasies of other, unearthly territories, to the notion of the terrestre that would be other than our own. Devoted to the work of Gaston Bachelard, the French philosopher of Air and Dreams, and to the Zen philosophy of spiritual and physical harmony that he first encountered in his training as a judo-ka in Yokohama in 1952, Klein surpasses all other artists of his time in the pursuit of the spiritual within art. Flight - with all of its allusions to the infinite, to the unknown, to the unimaginable - opposes itself to form, however, in Klein's sponge paintings, the raw material is transformed into a vessel for surpassing the questions and restrictions of medium, process and even the disavowal of form itself. Embedded in an ethereal ultramarine vacuum, the material trace becomes a trace of the immaterial, otherworldly and transcendent. RE 40 is a majestic example of Yves Klein’s unique artistic language. This is a profoundly lyrical work in which the dematerializing blue pigment enhances both the sponges and the highly textured ground. Moreover, the delicate play of light and shade that moves across the holes of the sponges further animates the entire composition. This is a seminal work that boldly confronts the viewer with a deeply intellectual philosophy of art and life and, yet, leaves the viewer with an overwhelming sense of peace and calm that is so characteristic of Klein’s oeuvre as a whole. –- Monochrome Rouge (Aug 1957; 328x1258pix, 26kb) _ This is brown rather than red, but Gewaltig has restaured the red, added other colors, and completely metamorphosed the picture into the symmetrical _ Monocle de Rome Rouge aka Mon Nom (2006; screen filling, 273kb _ ZOOM to 1864x2636pix, 2617kb). –- Monochrome und Feuer (768x1773pix, 71kb) triptique –- M18 (850x1672pix, 236kb) a black rectangle covered with whitish scratches and dots, which might well be titled Close-up of a section of a man's black hair barely beginning to turn gray and holding a lot of dandruff. Gewaltig has injected colors and transformed it into the comparatively colorful _ Ad Rem XVIII (2006; screen filling, 332kb _ ZOOM to 1864x2636pix, 3272kb). –- F 91 (823x1181pix, 40kb) –- RP 2: Grenoble (535x839pix, 37kb) blue, partly veined. –- KB 242A (1304x1084pix, 188kb) –- IKB 150 (800x658pix, 31kb) — Untitled blue monochrome (1959, 92x72cm) _ Klein rejected the idea of representation or personal expression in painting, and became obsessed with immaterial values, beyond the visible or tactile. He began making monochrome paintings in 1947 as a way of attaining total freedom. A decade later, he developed his trademark, patented color, International Klein Blue (IKB), which is very close to Egyptian Blue and to Dark Blue. He made a series of paintings using IKB, as well as sculptures made from objects such as sponges dipped in the color. — Untitled Anthropometry (1960) _ A monumental work. Women’s naked bodies in blue and gold float and soar through an intense blue space. Around these bodies Yves Klein has sprayed more paint, outlining each figure with a kind of aura. He has also sprayed round leaves and branches to leave silvery-blue silhouettes. Klein was famous for his vivid and distinctive blue which he called IKB (International Klein Blue). He achieved this by evaporating the binding element in his paint so that only the concentrated blue pigment was left. The repeated use of this blue in his work enabled him to express a sense of mysticism, or “the infinite expansion of the universe”, as he called it. The painting also seems to contain an elemental sense of air, earth, fire and water. Yves Klein was a fanatical reader of the works of the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard who was interested in a psychological analysis of space and fire, which he wrote about in his books Dreams and Air and Water. Klein’s method of creating this work was very unorthodox. He staged a 'happening' in Paris at which naked women rolled in the gold and blue paint leaving imprints of their bodies on the canvas. The world 'Anthropometry' included in the title refers to the study and measurement of human forms. Once the canvas was vertical, the figures seemed to fly like angels through a celestial space, painted on a great altarpiece. Although the imagery is secular, the blue and gold palette evokes Italian religious paintings of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries where a blue-robed Virgin appears against a gold background. It is quite possible that Klein intended to convey a religious spirituality in this work. He was a devout Catholic and was always writing prayers to his patron saint, Saint Rita of lost causes. Klein died at the early age of thirty-four as a result of a hereditary heart condition. — Grande anthropophagie bleue, Hommage à Tennessee Williams (488x700pix, 220kb) —(090427) |
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