calendario eventi  :: 

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5/10/2006

Yves Klein

Centre Pompidou, Paris

Corps, couleur, immateriel / Fabrica: Les yeux ouverts

Curated by Camille Morineau

Klein died in 1962, at the age of 34, after a brief but exhilarating seven-year career. His international fame has, however, too narrowly identified him with his monochrome paintings and his IKB blue, and he was indeed but poorly understood during his own lifetime. His work in fact went far beyond painting : as he himself insisted, " My canvasses are no more than the ashes of my art. "*

Despite numerous retrospectives, among them the exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in 1983, much of Klein's work remains unknown, as has been revealed by the recent publication of the his writings.

The exhibition "Yves Klein. Corps, couleur, immate'riel" is supported by LVMH / Moet Hennessy. Louis Vuitton.

In bringing together 120 paintings and sculptures, some 40 drawings and manuscripts and a great number of contemporary films and photographs, this exhibition offers a new reading of Yves Klein's work. Adhering as faithfully as possible to the artist's own intentions as revealed in his recently published writings, the design of the exhibition brings out the importance that Klein accorded to the diverse aspects of his artistic practice: not only painting and sculpture, but also performances, sound works, interventions in public spaces, architectural projects and more.

In reconstituting such works as the Sculpture ae'rostatique of 1957 (the release of 1001 balloons), or the Illumination de l'Obe'lisque of 1958, in the Place de la Concorde, the exhibition reinstates Klein's ephemeral actions as the equals of his monochrome paintings. Klein's work in fact depends on a dynamic equilibrium between two poles : the visible and the invisible, matter and void, the body and the immaterial. This tension is at the heart of the work: even as he explored the void in Le Vide (Galerie Iris Clert, Paris 1958), Klein would continue to create visible artworks.

The exhibition is organised around Klein's three emblematic colours : blue, gold and pink, marshalled in this order in his writing and in the few rare triptychs. From 1959 onward, his work would be based upon this triad. The Ex-voto de'die' a' Sainte-Rita, 1961, deposited by the artist at the Convent of Santa Rita in Cascia, Italy, and presented for the first time at this exhibition, is valuable evidence of the importance of pink and gold alongside blue in Klein's imaginative universe.

The subtitle of the exhibition, Corps, couleur, immateriel (Body, Colour, Immaterial), brings out the very contemporary aspects of Klein's art, close to the concerns of today's practitioners : the artist's physical, everyday involvement with his work ; his desire to expand the artist's role, through the use of colour, to bring about a (technical, urbanistic and philosophical) transformation of the world ; his use of natural or ephemeral materials ; and his exploration of the immaterial.

The exhibition will also be presented at the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Wien (Vienna, Austria) from 9 March to 3 June 2007.

Themes

Body
The body - the flesh of the model, but also the athletic body of the artist himself, who held a blackbelt in judo - early proved itself necessary as a counterpoint, a balancing factor in the face of the vertigo of the immaterial. Used first to " stabilise the pictorial material " in the monochromes, the model soon acquired a certain autonomy, " flinging itself into the colour ", as in the Anthropometries, paintings derived from the imprint of the paint-covered body (be it male or female) on the canvas, a body always under the direction of the artist, whether still or in movement. An essential chapter in the history of performance art, this series of works is also a profoundly important event in the history of painting, the composition of the painting being delegated to chance and to the body of another.

Colour
The link between the body and the immaterial is colour, but colour in the expanded sense given it by Klein : far from being reduced to pigment and binder, for him it is a spiritual, cosmic force that charges the whole atmosphere, transforms life itself into a work of art through the mere presence of the artist. Colour was very soon restricted, in 1959, to three tones, each of which evokes one of these crucial aspects or themes of his work : blue, gold, and pink.

Immaterial
In 1957, not long after the appearance of the first monochromes in 1955, Klein turned to the exploration of the "immaterial aspect " of art : his exhibitions of " the Void ", evanescent performance works, ephemeral sculptures in fire or water, sound works, " air architectures " and artistic appropriation of the entirety of space (extending to the whole cosmos) were all manifestations of the " invisible" that for him were the essential experience of art.
These vertiginous experiences have to a considerable extent escaped the attention of critics and public : it is time to rediscover their full implications and the importance they have both to the conceptual art they prefigure and to the performance art whose essential concerns they illuminate.

It is difficult to show the invisible; very aware of this problem, Klein dealt with it in advance by issuing a multiplicity of statements and organising photographs and films of his most ephemeral works. So it is that it is possible today, by assembling and juxtaposing such documentation, not only to recall these moments but to treat them as the artworks that Klein intended.

Part 1:
Impregnation
" I foresee today that in future the real way to visit space, a space more distant, infinitely more distant, than our solar universe or any other, will not be by missile or rocket or sputnik, but by impregnation. "* The blue monochrome is no more than an introduction to the " blue revolution " - the diffusion of the pictorial sensibility throughout the whole universe, both visible and invisible. A room of IKB thus leads on to planetary reliefs and then to a "theatre of the immaterial" in which are assembled Klein's invisible, conceptual, musical and sound projects. Finally, sponge reliefs on the theme of music demonstrate the process of impregnation, a process that acts on both world and viewer, as is witnessed by the " readers ", anthropomorphic sponges and portraits of a viewer "impregnated" with blue.

Part 2:
The illumination of matter
" To tell the truth, what I am trying to achieve - my future development, my solution, the way out of my problem - is to no longer do anything at all, as quickly as possible, but consciously, with care and caution. I want to be, " full stop ". I will be a " painter ". People will say of me: that's the painter. And I will feel myself to be a " painter ", a real one, precisely, because I won't paint, or at least not in appearance. The fact of my existence as a painter will be the most " wonderful " pictorial work of the present age. "* A room of Monogolds, among them a number of gold " anthropometries ", introduces the notion of the transmutation of matter : the artist uses and transforms raw materials, domesticates natural forces and transforms everything into art by his mere presence. The Cosmogonies capture the imprint of wind, of rain. Fire and air, two invisible fluids that Klein officially claimed as his own, give rise to works both real (fire paintings) and utopian (air architecture, schemes of planetary air-conditioning).

Part 3:
Embodiment
" I used nude models so as not, by secluding myself in the overly spiritual sphere of artistic creation, to lose touch with the crude common sense that is necessary to our embodied condition and which in the atmosphere of the studio is concentrated in the presence of the flesh. "*
The Monopinks, with the Suaires (Shrouds), intimate impressions of the female body, show how in Klein's work colour connects the body to the world. Pink evokes the skin of the model that Klein would never abandon, present first as the " stabiliser " of the monochromes and then as the " living paintbrush " of the Anthropometries. These last will be displayed in all their ambition and formal diversity, in the form of three big Batailles (Battles - moving bodies) and the biggest of the Frises (Friezes - static bodies).

Conclusion:

Triptychs in blue, gold and pink
""The blood of sensibility is blue ", says Shelley, and that is precisely what I think. The price of blue blood can never be silver. It must be gold. And then, as we shall see later in Dr Robert Desoille's analysis of waking dream, blue, gold and pink are of the same nature. Between these states there can be fair exchange. "*

Audio-Visual presentations
Throughout the exhibition will be audio-visual presentations compiled from contemporary records (sounds and images) by the Centre Pompidou, offering visitors access to Yves Klein's immaterial works: performances, exhibitions of the void, work with fire and air, and collaborations with models.

Audio 4 children
The Centre Pompidou will for the first time provide, as an integral part of the exhibition, audio facilities specially conceived for children under six (who have not yet mastered reading), to help young children to discover the exhibition for themselves.

Catalogue
Editor: Camille Morineau
Format 23.5 x 28 cms 304 pp.250 ill. in colour, 100 b. & w.
Price: 39.90 euros

Image: Yves Klein, Globe terrrestre bleu, 1962 (c) Collection particulie're, (c) Adagp, Paris 2006


At the same time:

FabricaS
6 Oct. - 6 Nov. 06
Forum, Level -1, 800 m2

Chief curator Marie-Laure Jousset

Established in 1994 on the initiative of Luciano Benetton and Oliviero Toscani, Fabrica is a communications research centre whose range of activities extends from graphic design to cinema, taking in industrial design, writing, interactive media, photography and music on the way. Housed in a strikingly simple and rigorous building by Tadao Ando, in Treviso, Italy, it is a unique institution, led by an international team, that encourages the creative development of selected young professionals from all over the world, who are granted a one-year scholarship to work on the projects they submit. Responsible for many media campaigns for major organisations (Reporters Sans Frontie'res, World Health Organisation) this private-sector research centre encourages cultural cross-fertilisation and a global consciousness in all its fields of activity. Conceived by the Centre Pompidou, this exhibition presents a number of the projects developed at Treviso. Accompanied by a film programme and a series of musical performances, the exhibition offers an opportunity to discover the scope of Fabrica's work, which is redefining the frontiers between art and communications.

Divided into four zones, the exhibition Fabrica : les yeux ouverts will reveal to the public the work of a multidisciplinary research centre whose horizons extend to the whole world.

The first of these zones is devoted to the centre's core interest: visual communication. Graphics, photography and video are all drafted into the service of Fabrica's partners, amongst which are many public institutions and such non-governmental organisations as SOS Racisme and FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization), as well as a number of United Nations agencies. This section thus presents two global media campaigns: "Violence" (2003), for the World Health Organisation, and "Food for Life" (2003), for the World Food Programme.

The second zone investigates the global vision that characterises Fabrica's activities, with photo-reportages from all over the world, each on a different theme grouped together under the title I See. This section also presents one project carried out with Reporters Sans Frontie'res. The Colors Notebook offers a chance to speak out to those who generally have none, bringing together in writing accounts of themselves by people who live in the remotest corners of the planet or in places where freedom of expression is under threat.

The third zone presents experimental interactive projects developed by the Fabrica teams that engage both the mind and the senses. To gain access to the exhibition, visitors must descend a stairway, each step triggering a note played on the marimba of Southern Africa. Tuned Stairway thus offers everyone a chance to make their own music. Dialogs is a light and sound installation. It too calls for spectator participation: plunged in darkness, the visitor can only make out what is going on by moving about to find the right view point. Similarly, the installation We are the Time, We are the Famous also plays on the viewer's mobility as it projects his or her image, still or in motion as the case might be. Conceived as an interactive research tool, the Stock Exchange of Visions offers an opportunity to reflect on the future, while 10 x 10 reveals the way in which different media across the world treat the same information, using images taken from the Net. Finally, a short film, Evidence, explores children's relationship to television.

The fourth and last zone takes a look at Fabrica itself, with a virtual tour of the buildings and a series of video self-portraits by those involved. The exhibition thus offers an opportunity to discover the wide range of projects undertaken by a research centre dedicated to the development of new styles, new languages, new ideas and new materials for the communications of the future.

In parallel with the exhibition, the Centre Pompidou will present a programme of films focussing on Fabrica's activities in this field. Since its creation in 1998, Fabrica Cinema has encouraged independent film-making, more especially in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America.
Supporting local initiatives, the department has helped to produce and distribute numerous films, among them Blackboards, by the Iranian Samira Makhmalbaf, No Man’s Land by the Bosnian director Danis Tanovic, and Tropical Malady by Thai film-maker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, all of which have won awards at international festivals. A programme of films made, produced or distributed by Fabrica will be shown in the Centre's cinemas, selected by Marco Muller, director of Venice Film Festival, who on October 12 will also chair a panel discussion between some of the film-makers. There will also be a series of concerts and musical performances, notably the first European preview of Andrea Molino's Winners, a new multimedia opera co-produced by Fabrica and the Brisbane Festival, with the Australian percussion group TaikOz and the Dresden Symphony Orchestra.

Exhibition open every day except Tuesdays, from 11 am to 9 pm
Late opening Thursdays until 11 pm
Free admission to exhibition

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Robert Rauschenberg 11 October 2006 - 15 January 2007

Centre Pompidou - Paris
(Metro Hotel de Ville, Rambuteau)
Hours: exhibition is open from 5 October 2006 to 5 February 2007, daily except Tuesdays, from 11am to 9 pm nocturnes on Thursdays till pm during the exhibition and all Fridays from 5 January untill the end of the exhibition
Ticket price : 10 euros,reduced-price tickets : 8 euros. Valid for the day of purchase for the Muse'e National d’Art. Moderne and all exhibitions. Admission is free for members of the Center (holders of the laissez-passer annual pass)

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