Yves Klein was a French artist, born in 1928 and came to an early death at the age of 34 in 1962. He was a member of the French artistic movement known as Nouveau réalisme. Nouveau réalisme was an art movement founded in 1960 by Pierre Restany. The movement dealt with new ways of perceiving the real. This idea can be seen throughout Klein’s pieces. Here we will be comparing one of Klein’s Anthropometry of the Blue Period, with his photomontage known as Leap into the Void.
Yves Klein used naked women to act as a “living brush” to create a series of Anthropometry paintings. These paintings combined traditional painting with the emerging world of performance art. Hence, displaying a shift in the art world from a painting being simply the visual end product to exposing the actual process of the artist making the painting. When asked about his technique of using live models, Klein explained, “At my direction, the flesh itself applied the color to the surface, and with perfect exactness. I could continue to maintain a precise distance from my creation and still dominate its execution.” This is referring to his previous statement that a traditional brush felt too psychological, instead wishing to create a distance between him and the canvas. All of these works were created in same monochrome blue color, which Klein would patent as ‘International Klein Blue.’ This same blue can be seen in some of his other works such as Untitled Blue Monochrome, which was created the year before. During the creation of the Anthropometry of the Blue Period, an audience watched as Klein conducted the women to the sound of Klein’s Monotone Symphony. Which was a single note played for twenty minutes, then followed by another twenty minutes of silence.
gelatin silver print, 1960
Yves Klein’s Leap into the Void was created in the same year of 1960. Here Klein is continuing to explore performance art, but here combining it with photography. This piece was created through photomontage, a technique that was familiar to photographers, but not as known to the public eye. For this piece, Klein hired photographers Harry Shunk and Jean Kender, to help create Klein’s vision. Klein claims to have completed the jump earlier in the year. In order to create the photomontage, two images were taken. The first had Klein jumping from the second-floor window into a tarpaulin held below by the artist’s friends. The second photo simply displayed the surrounding scene without Klein. By combining the two, Klein was able to create the impression of both freedom and abandonment. Since both pieces were created in the same year, they share many similarities. They both aim to combine the emergences of performance art with most established mediums such as painting or photography. Though the Anthropometry of the Blue Period more closely relates to the general depiction of performance art with its large audience during the creation of the piece, verses Leap into the Void which was accomplished with a smaller group of people in order to enforce the illusion in the final image.
Writing by Lauren Tuider. An Art & Design major and contributor to the COMP Magazine, Tuider is pursuing a Bachelor of Arts with a concentration in graphic design. Her focus is upon the intersection of design and fashion as encountered in the commercial and fine arts.
