Some days ago I was invited to an
art talk, organised by students. Yves Klein was the topic. I admit that I’m not
interested in him, but I understand that many of you might like him.
The talk was led by Javier Ortiz
Echagüe, who is about to release a book about the topic with a different point
of view, making it easier to understand Klein’s artworks.
Monochrome Sponge Painting 1960 (Wikipedia) |
He also tried to imitate the
sea’s blue, which is when we first see sponges glued on his canvas. However,
for Klein’s disappointment, canvas’ve got boundaries and he wanted to represent
the infinity. This will get him to sell empty spaces, which he named as ‘Zones
of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility’, to organise exhibitions in which the
gallery was simply empty, to levitate or to paint using fire.
He seeks for the Absolute,
Heaven, the immaterial with material elements. Gradually he will find out that
he is chasing an utopy, something actually impossible to accomplish.
Just like his family, he was
devoted to Saint Rita of Cascia, the patron of the impossible. There is a
testimony of this devotion, kept in the Saint’s Sanctuary since 1961, inside a
little box divided in red, blue and gold, which are the colors that characterise his
painting career. There was no acknowledgment of this until the restoration of
the Convent due to the earthquake in 1979. The testimony was written in French.
Ex-voto to St. Rita of Cascia Yves Klein, 1961 (yveskleinarchives.org) |
I’d like to add a short remark:
It’s spoken about newest
generations in Spain as the ‘Ni-Ni generation’ (The expression comes from ‘Ni estudian ni trabajan’ which means ‘They neither study nor work’ pretendy
to show how youngsters are interessed by anything nowadays) I could check again
during this art talk that there is a lot of youngsters that work, study and are
interested in culture. I was quite impressed by how they were listening in
complete silence and by the questions they asked.
I’ll always be grateful to them
and to our hosts, who are always so cosy and warm-hearted.
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