Artist Research - Yves Klein

Yves Klein 

Yves Klein was a french born artist. He has been considered an important figure in post-war Europe. Klein who was the leading member of the french art movement of nauveau realism. This movement was founded in 1960 by art critic Pierre Restany. Klein was a pioneer in the development of performance art, and is also known as a major inspiration to and as a forerunner of minimal art, and also pop art.

Many of his early works were monochrome and produced in a variety of colours. By the late 1950's his work was almost exclusively in a deep blue. 

I have chosen to research this artist because of one specific set of prints which were created in 1960. This series of prints were titled The Monotone Symphony. 

Klein conducted a ten piece orchestra in his personal composition of the monotone symphony, which he wrote in 1949. The symphony consisted of one single note played for twenty minutes. 

Three nude female models were then asked to dip and roll themselves in a deep blue paint and as the orchestra started to play they touched various parts of there bodies onto large artist paper which has been placed around the room prior to the start of the event. 

The whole process was watching by an audience which were smartly dressed in cocktail dresses and suits. The whole spectacle was surely a metaphysical and spiritual experience for all involved. 

The artistic experience lasted for around 20 minutes. When the orchestra stopped playing It was followed by twenty minutes of silence. During this silence everyone involved willingly froze themselves in there own private meditational space. 

I selected this series to single out from the rest of Kleins works because the phrase 'body art' is aptly fitting and describes Kleins 'Anthropometric' series to the bone. He employed nude female models as human paint brushes for his work. The prints are on the boundary between the figurative and the abstract, but instead of dramatic expression of expreiences they are simply expressive prints of the womans figures which featured.