The Blue Reliefs consist of eight blue cubes that hang cantilevered out from the wall in two vertical rows.  Every cube has the dimensions 19.5 cm deep, 12cm high, and 9.5 cm wide which gives them a resemblance to bricks that could be used in construction.  This piece moves towards immateriality by refusing an "already composed, aggregate form in favor of one that emphasized the constituent elements themselves and their relationship to unbound space and the infinite possibilities of structural definition." (Stich 93).  The formal elements of the piece itself do not move into immateriality so much as the conceptual ideas surrounding it do.  If you were to think of a building as a whole and begin to dematerialize it you would probably come to an end at the bricks, the smallest most basic component of the building.  With that in mind you could also look at a building and realize that the form it takes, the arrangement of all the individual bricks, could be rearranged into an infinite number of possibilities.  In a way this piece is a metaphor for life itself.  The basic building block of life is the atom.  Although there are an infinite number of forms that we perceive in this world, each and everyone can be broken down to the atom.  Even though we think we can see discernible objects, the entire universe is a giant sea of atoms moving all about and mixing together.  If all we could perceive was atoms, the world around us would be absolutely uniform, completely immaterial "no limits, no dimensions ... everywhere, nowhere, in the present, the past, the future" (Stich 143). 

     The immaterial was so important to Klein because of his idea of pictorial sensibility.  Sensibility is a pure energy that is perceptible but not tangible, it is the "soul of the world".  He moved towards the immaterial using fields of pure colour to create an ambiance that could be felt but not detected by any of the five senses.  For him colour was "materialized sensibility" which "inhibits extradimensional space and impregnates both people and environments." (Stitch 66).  The colour of his choice was ultramarine blue because he believed it "signified the indefinable and the boundlessness of space." (Stitch 77).  These concepts of sensibility and colour impregnation are evident in the outward projecting cubes of the Blue Reliefs.  By moving away from the wall and into the space of the room the cubes "explore environmental color impregnation" (Stitch 93).  This piece takes colour impregnation quite literally in the sense that only the blue cubes jut out from the wall to penetrate the room, filling the space with ambiance.

     When I first saw Klein's Blue Reliefs I thought there was something odd about them, that it didn't quite fit in with the rest of his work.  However it is always the oddballs in the crowd that attract my attention, and that may have been what compelled me to recreate it for the exhibition.  Perhaps it seemed rather curious because I was looking at it as more of a material object, which I now realize would have warranted a slap on the wrists or even a stiff fine from Yves.  Having gained a greater understanding of Yves Klein and the Blue Reliefs through class discussion and research I now see how it fits into his corpus of work.  However, there is still something about it that doesn't seem right. 

     The piece seem conceptually sound but the more I think about it the more it seems to me that the piece has left some formal issues unresolved.  If he was so concerned about the immaterial,  why did he chose objects that so closely resemble bricks.  Bricks are very material, just pick one up and you will feel the heaviness, the solidity, and the rough texture.  There is definitely no denying their physical presence in the world.  But then I think of the metaphor between bricks and atoms as building blocks and it makes so much sense.  The only way I can get around this problem is to believe that Yves doesn't want me to be concerned with the object itself but the feeling it creates within.  Looking at it that way I can get past the physicality of the bricks. 

     As for impregnating the room with colour to create an ambiance that is felt but not seen I think this piece falls short, literally.  For one thing the bricks are too small.  They hardly protrude from the wall and they hardly penetrate the space of the room.  It does not give me the feeling of a vast blue colour field impregnating me or the space around me.  However, I notice that many of his works were not on a grand scale.  Possibly he relies on the contributions of a large quantity of works to achieve colour impregnation, rather than just individual pieces. 

     He also talked a lot about exploring unbounded and infinite space but this piece just barely gets started on that journey.  This piece is very much confined to the wall and doesn't appear to be going anywhere.  The cubes are further confined by being mounted on Plexiglas in groups of four.  How are the cubes free to explore space when their movement is restricted by their partners and the piece of Plexiglas they are stuck to?  This becomes more of a problem for me when I see each cube listed as a separate work in catalogues.  Why not make them clearly separate entities then?  Maybe if he created this piece later in his career he would have mounted them more along the lines of the sponge sculptures. 

     I hope I haven't convinced you that I don't like Klein's Blue Reliefs.  In fact I really do like this piece.  When I am forced to look at it critically it raises some issues for me.  Whether these issues are unresolved in Klein's piece itself or just unresolved in my mind I will have to wait and see.  Right now I am seeing the Blue Reliefs as more of a maquette.  I feel I will have to wait until I see this piece hanging in our exhibition before I can make a final decision as to how the Blue Reliefs fit into Yves Klein's body of work.