 |
Back to show catalogue |  |
|
Yves Klein's Monopinks: An Account of My Impregnation by Colour - Sarah Kyle 
Yves Klein first began the exploration of alternate monochromes around
1959 with a series of Monogolds and Monopinks. Up until this time, Klein's
focus was undeniably the International Klein Blue that marks majority of
his work. This branching out of the new monochromes beyond the blue, or
as he would argue, further into the blue, establishes a pattern of trinity
within Klein's art; arguably, this trinity, of ëcrimson/rose', gold, and
blue, continues Mondrian's commentary on the triad of primary colours as
the material representation of the "cosmic philosophy about harmony and
order" (Stich 194). While Klein denied Mondrian's influence, and,
in effect created a message of a cosmic order of faith, Mondrian's work
acts as a complement to, and perhaps foundation for, Klein's monochromes
(Stich 194). Another potential influence of Klein's exploration of colour-field
is Rauschenberg's ëGold Painting' of 1953, which sought to comment on the
physicality of the earth's element gold. Conversely, Klein's work represents
the symbolic opposite: for Klein, gold, in combination with the blue and
pink, marks a conduit between the temporal, material world and the immaterial
world (Stich 194). Klein's monopinks come to represent, then, alongside
the transcendent blue and the infinite, immaterial gold, the third aspect
of a trinity that reaches beyond Mondrian's triad of primary colours. The
pinks symbolize the virtue of caritas. This virtue encompasses charity
expressed through love, and is known in the Christian vocabulary as the
Holy Spirit. This paper will explore the Klein's monopinks as the material
representation of divine Love in a trinity of colour, whereby blue and
gold represent, respectively, the ineffable infinite (God as Faith), and
the eternal hope and harmony (God as Hope).
The noble pursuit of the Rosicrucian Order contextualizes Klein's fascination with a Trinity, or a union of Many as One. Klein began his formal initiation into the Order of the Rose and Cross in 1947, a year after he read the ëCosmogony of the Rose Cross', the essential manual of Rosicrucianism (McEvilley 239). Until 1958 Klein remained an active member of the Oceanside, California school of Rosicrucianism via correspondence. By 1958 his membership and ëhomework' lapsed, however, the traditions of union, transcendence, and the betterment of humanity, that the Order espoused, continued to dominated Klein's philosophy and manifest itself in his art (McEvilley 239). The central goal of the Rosicrucian tradition is the "ultimate synthesis of life and form" (McEvilley 240). ëLife' is defined as "pure spirit", and 'form' as physical matter. According to this ideology, the two have been completely divorced from one anther (McEvilley 240). Thus, for Klein, as for the Rosicrucians, the purpose of existence on earth was to strive for the reunion of Life and Form, or, to aspire to godliness despite the constraints of the humanity. This philosophy is deeply Neo-Platonic, and a close relation to the Tree of Life of the Christian Kabbalah.
[The monochromes] were never intended . . . to be decorative ëpictures'. Their function was entirely different: they were meant to gather the diffused energy that acts on our sense and to fix it, by means of colour, in a certain space. (15)What Restany proposes is that Klein's monochromes sought to focus the viewer's attention through their intensity and completeness, upon the ineffable and the transcendent unity beyond our material existence. Klein's philosophy expressed through the Monochromes is the antithesis (and perhaps response) to the completely secular focus of the existentialists.
As I was dutifully painting sponges, and becoming more and more frustrated with the colourless gaps in their centres, John (Klein's messenger, to be sure) said to me ëengage with it, Sarah. Pick it up in your hands and work with the paint'. Whether John was just tired of watching my fumbled attempts, or whether he truly sought to enlighten me, I was struck with an epiphany. For the first time since my childhood, I became joyfully messy, and I let paint get under my fingernails. Ostensibly, my interaction with Klein's message and media realized the joyous hope and associated with Klein's philosophy. It occurred to me that by physically interacting with the medium within the context of representing transcendent Love, an intriguing dialectic between the secular and the sacred is established. This interplay between the physicality of Klein's art, and the invasion of the senses by brilliant colour, becomes the part of the ascent to participating in the divine. The physical experience of re-visioning Klein's work converted me to his utopian ideology (at least temporarily); in his art I see an euphoric, though naively simplistic, prayer for unity through hope and love, of which our world is in dire need.
Bibliography Arman. "Selected quotes."
In Arman: 1955-1991 A Retrospective. (Alison
Bozo, Dominique. "Yves Klein:
Arrogance and Angelism." In Yves Klein:
Buchloh, Benjamin H. D. "Into
the Blue: Klein and Poses," Artforum. Vol. 33,
De Duve, Thierry. "Yves
Klein, or The Dead Dealer," October. No. 49,
Klein, Yves. "Prayer to Saint
Rita." In Yves Klein: 1928-1962 A Retrospective.
_________. "Selections
from The Monochrome Adventure." In Yves Klein:
_________. "Selections
from The War: A Little Personal Mythology of the
McEvilley, Thomas.
"Yves Klein and Rosicrucianism." In Yves Klein: 1928-
Mock, Jean-Yves. "Yves
Klein: An Appreciation." In Yves Klein: 1928-1962
Restany, Pierre. "Yves
Klein: The Ex-Voto for Saint Rita of Cascia." In Yves
Rosenthal, Nan. "Assisted
Levitation: The Art of Yves Klein." In Yves Klein:
_________. "Into the
Blue: Comic Relief," Artforum. Vol. 33, Summer
Stich, Sidra. Yves Klein.
Exh. Cat. Stuttgart and London: Cantz Verlag and
http://www.crcsite.org Conversely, Thierry De Duve argues that Klein's philosophy and art were wholly self-absorbed. He states that Klein's art does not promote hope, and, is instead enslaved to consumerism and the maintenance of capitalism's reign. The virtually zero-profit of Klein's work, however, attests to a value beyond the all-mighty franc.
|
||
 |
 |
Klein's Ex Voto box left at Saint Rita's shrine, in Cascia, Italy, is a
testament to this Rosicrucian vision that encompasses both the Christian
Trinity and, what the Rosicrucians term, the Trinity of Fire. The Trinity
of Fire is ostensibly the three theological virtues of Christianity (Faith,
Hope, and Charity), which are both implied and inherent in the three parts
of the Christian Godhead. Blue, Gold, and Pink, then, come to symbolically
represent Faith, Hope, and Charity, which together form the ineffable union
for which Klein's work aims. The Monopinks epitomize the third virtue of
godliness: Love. What better colour to choose to express the benevolence
of godly charity than crimson, or rose? Its brilliance refuses to be denied
and, as intended, invades and permeates the viewers' space without the
violence associated with red. The viewer is enveloped in the colour-manifestation
of divine grace. Now, granted, Klein's self-proclaimed prophet-status,
carrying the grace of the divine to his viewer, is clearly a presumptuous
one. Despite Klein's rampant megalomania, the wonder he infused in his
life, and actualized in his art, transcends his ego. He desired to communicate
a joyous vision, one that he believed, as a dutiful Rosicrucian, would
better humankind. This is evident in his prayer to Saint Rita enclosed
in the votive box: he states "grant me thy aid still and always in my art
and always protect all I have created so that even in spite of myself it
may always be of Great Beauty" (Klein 257). Despite the clearly elf-important
bent of his prayer, Klein requests divine aid in conveying beauty, as a
manifestation of God's grace, to a jaded public. In an age of fragmentation
and post-war pessimism marked by the nihilism of the existential philosophers,
Klein's reinstatement of the Trinitarian virtues, and the unity that they
represent, endeavours to dispel the negativity and stasis of post-World
War II Europe. For Klein the Immaterial, that he sought to represent via
his Monochromes and the exhibition of the Void, provides a synthesis of
our material reality with the divine (Restany 14). In this light, Klein's
monochromes mark his attempt to ratify Life and Form. As Pierre Restany
states in his article "Who is Yves Klein?",
Notably, Klein's ideology of synthesis did spiral into naïve irrationality,
for which he was labelled both a charlatan and a fraud (Rosenthal 129):
Klein hoped that in the future people would be able to complete the transcendence
of body while still alive. He hoped that people could eventually
escape the materiality of the world, and its inherent limitations, via
levitation, out-of-body experiences, and telepathy. Klein thought that
this subversion of the physical was the key to a new Eden, and that it
heralded the "union of science, art and religion" (McEvilley 241).
Restany states, "Klein acted as a prophet, but in the service of the Order
of God" (15). Klein certainly fashioned himself as a prophet. In reality,
he was more of a naïve visionary. However, in an age bent upon Line,
divisions, and the negative anxiety that accompanies them, Klein's work
carries a message of Hope for unity beyond the pessimism, death, and destruction
that the world had so recently witnessed. Klein's philosophy on art revolved
around eliminating lines and the boundaries that contain and segregate
humanity. He believed that "line divides and obstructs the pure space of
cosmic sensibility, while colour asserts the freedom and fullness of space"
(McEvilley 239). In this light, Klein's monopinks symbolize the cosmic
embrace, the love inherent in hope and faith, and the freedom that this
hopefulness enables.
Part
II: Interplay