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By this time Klein had arrived at a means of painting in which the incandescence of IKB could be maximised. First he stretched his canvas or cotton scrim over a wooden backing, which had been treated with a milk protein called casein. This assisted the adherence of the paint when it was applied with a roller. Then he applied an industrial blue paint, similar to gouache, which he mixed with a highly volatile fixative. When the paint dried the pigment appeared to hover over the surface of the canvas creating a rich velvety texture and an unusual appearance of depth. Many of Klein’s artistic activities, such as selling zones of ‘immaterial’ space for the price of gold, trod a fine line between shamanism and commercialism. Like other artists of the Nouveau Réaliste movement in France, or the Italian artist Piero Manzoni (1933-1963), Klein’s practice was strongly influenced by the originality, irreverence and wit of the French artist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968). The production of monochrome paintings was probably conceived by Klein as both a spiritual and a marketable activity. At his 1957 exhibition in Milan, he displayed a series of eleven ostensibly identical blue monochromes, each with a different price which he claimed reflected its unique spirit. As he explained: ‘Each blue world of each painting, although the same blue and treated in the same way, presented a completely different essence and atmosphere. None resembled any other — no more than pictoral moments resemble each other — although all were of the same superior and subtle nature (marked by the immaterial) The most sensational observation was from the “buyers”. They chose among the eleven exhibited paintings, each in their own way, and each paid the requested price. The prices were all different, of course.’ In 1947, Klein began making monochrome paintings, which he associated with freedom from ideas of representation or personal expression. A decade later, he developed his trademark, patented colour, International Klein Blue (IKB). This colour, he believed, had a quality close to pure space, and he associated it with immaterial values beyond what can be seen or touched. He described it as ‘a Blue in itself, disengaged from all functional justification’. Klein made around 200 monochrome paintings using IKB. He did not give titles to these works but, after his death, his widow assigned a number to each one. Wember lists a total of 194 blue monochrome
Der var en lille havfisk af god familie, navnet husker jeg ikke, det må de lærde sige dig.
Stickshift 2.0
Speedometer
Carpathian Forest Research
Station, Ukraine
In re publica, relevatus istius poena vehementius reliquis vivis iam aliquot annis facinus exstitit nisi per te, nullum flagitium sine te; tibi
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