ë[In the beginning] pure colour, the universal soul in which the human soul was bathing in a state of earthly paradise, was mastered by the invasion of the line, imprisoned, compartmentalized, cut apart, returned to slavery.  In the joy and delirium of its guileful victory, line subjugated man and imprinted upon him its abstract rhythm.' (Rice: 218)

   Thus begins Yves Klein's description of a binarizing war for supremacy between the opposed forces of line and colour.  A conflict in which the artist would favour colour as a inevitable victor.  Yet, as we shall see, this prophet of colour produced a small number of works that call this celebration into question.  Works so extraordinarily linear that they threaten the unity of the prophet's message.  The Sculpture Bleue, Pluie Bleue and Pluie Rouge all stand out as works in which colour has failed to subsume line and make it irrelevant.

   Before exploring the nature of these works it would perhaps be edifying to examine the nature of the conflict itself.  By couching his introduction to the war between line and colour in terms of the earthly paradise Klein places his perceived conflict on the same level as creation, the temptation and the expulsion.  In these terms then does the initial victory of line correspond to the beginning of linear time as thought to have begun at the moment of the expulsion?  If this supposition is correct colour must then be the atemporal state in which we (humanity) were in intimate contact with the God-head prior to giving in to temptation. Time here would exist as a field that encompasses all yet allows movement in any direction within it.  The iconic significances that flow from this sort of allegory are obvious.  The serpent, most visually linear of God's creations, proves to be the tempter, seeking the expulsion of the first parents from the garden.  The snake divides man and wife, placing them at odds before the Divine presence, his first act of transgression similar to the way the line divides colour from colour upsetting the primal purity of the atemporal Edenic state.  What happens if the metaphoric connection to creation is extended?  Colour, existing en potentia (perhaps even within the line itself?), somehow survives the expulsion and hundreds of years in the post-lapsarian (that is, post-Edenic) state, perpetually at war with the forces of the line, awaiting expectantly the coming of a messiah.  This is the role in which Klein envisioned himself.

   Out of the struggle for primacy between line and colour Art is born.  Since its birth Art has shown in itself the indelible marks of its birthright, wavering back and forth between valuation of each of its two parents.  It is only natural then that the expected messiah should come from the among Art's adherents, from among the artists.  Klein quite explicitly casts himself in this messianic role in the last paragraph of The War: A Little Personal Mythology of the Monochrome (Rice: 219.)  As a Christ figure  Klein must show the way back to the primal state.  As Christ acts as a surrogate for mankind and through his actions illumines a path back to the congress with God, so must Klein, by example, light a path back to the garden in which the initial confrontation was played out.  How will he go about this?

    The Sculpture Bleue appears physically to be a collection of sticks/lines (these elements will be used interchangeably) gathered together on a small boulder and presented in IKB to the viewer.  Is the blue colour to absorb the lines and lift them into the realm of colour?  Perhaps, but here the line still maintains the power to transgress the singular purity of colour and manages to project its own existence in spite of its covering of pigment.  This does not, however, completely undo the project that Klein has set out for himself.  Klein has presented, perhaps not completely consciously, both combatants in his ëWar' as facets of one another.  The line here is covered in pigment but is not a line traditionally comprised of pigment as well?  By collecting together so many lines the artist creates the very beginnings of a visual field.  A field that he has impregnated, even at this fledgling stage, with colour.  The atemporal field is thus combined with the linear progression of time in a new and interesting way.  As facets of one another the potential for ësalvation' (an approach to the atemporal) exists in us all

   Pluie Bleue and Pluie Rouge further complicate this potential road back to Eden by once again reasserting the individual line.  Covered in, but comprised of pigment, these lines are separated from one another, causing the field effect to be broken before it can begin... but is it really?  By separating the lines in space Klein makes it much more difficult to perceive them as a unified whole, but not impossible.  The uniform spacing of the lines allows the eye of the viewer pull them together as the dramatic power of the pigment vibrates outward to fill the intermediary spaces.  Thus the Rain sculptures are perhaps even more effective than the monochromes or pigmented sculptures by virtue of their requiring the viewer to commit to thought and analysis in order to actualise the latent colour field.  These ërain drops' by their association with liquid in name reveal a fluidity in the identification of an individual mark as either line or colour. 

   The painter/prophet is revealed to have been blinkered by his zeal.  His focus on one of the primal pair at the expense of the other has strangled his ability to step back and to look at the unity that exists between these elements that he has perceived as opposites.  The line is only colour in a compressed space.  Likewise the colour is line expanded and exploded across a larger surface.
 

PART II: HANDS ON

   I am not certain what the analysis portion of this paper reveals about my engagement with Klein in the pieces explored and re-interpreted.  While the blue painted dowels of the Blue Rain lay drying on the living room floor I began to perceive them not as individual sticks but as a pattern of parallel lines and then eventually as the ëfield' I describe above.  This image is also the basis of my suggestion that colour is latent or present en potentia in line.  The bleeding together of the lines into the field could not have occurred if this were not true.  Perhaps this is the effect Klein was looking for in the viewer but I tend to believe that this is not actually the case.  I think, based on his writings, that Klein did indeed see an opposition of sorts between colour and line but perhaps not on so grandiose a scale as his writing suggests.  I think that while he might not deny my reading he also might not endorse it either.  As always it is difficult to separate theatrics from sincere belief where Klein is involved. 
   The idea to connect line and colour to temporality and atemporality grew out of a consideration of his work in light of discussions on the nature of paradise in Dante.  An odd connection to be sure but one that has dominated my consideration of how this artist works.  The void as presented by Klein always seemed to take me back to a consideration of a space out of time.   The void seemed to represent a perpetual present, as that perceived by a child, in which colour as a timeless force could dominate.  I considered how a child, when presented with a box of colours and a colouring book will choose to ignore the predetermined lines and add colour where an internal directive suggests that it is necessary.  This is not necessarily a transgressive act, the child may connect colour and line in ways that the adult will not.  For example, in selecting a certain colour for a line that will denote an arm or some hair the child conflates line and colour as one in the same.  The trail of pink and blue hand prints that where left after the production of the interpretations speaks, I think, of the child that doesn't agree with where the lines have been placed.

Stich, Sidra.  Yves Klein.  Exhibition Catalogue.  Cantz Verlag, Stuttgart.  1994.

Yves Klein: 1928 - 1962.  A Retrospective, Exhibition Catalogue.  Institute for the Arts, Rice University, Houston.  The Arts Publisher, Inc., New York.  1982.