The first examination of the practices of two French artists who were key exponents of the Nouveau Réalisme movement, highlighting two opposing and complementary aspects of their poetics.
Yves Klein e Arman. Le Vide et Le Plein is published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at Collezione Giancarlo e Danna Olgiati in Lugano. Curated by Bruno Corà and designed by Mario Botta, the show examines the complementary practices of lifelong friends Yves Klein (1928–1962) and Arman (1928–2005). In 1958, Klein held a show at Paris's Iris Clert Gallery titled Le Vide (The Void), in which he removed all the art from the walls and display cabinets and re-whitewashed the space. Two years later, Arman occupied the same gallery with Le Plein (The Full-Up), in which he stuffed the rooms with enough trash to be seen from outside through the windows. Klein aimed to override the notion of art as synonymous with the material production of works, while Arman made clear the industrial essence of modern humanity. Using these two contrasting exhibitions as a starting point, Le Vide et Le Plein explores the poetics of Klein and Arman, and synthesizes their divergent practices as two compatible tenets of Nouveau réalisme. This richly illustrated publication features essays by Bruno Corà and Tobia Bezzola, an interview with architect Mario Botta, a dedicated section on the exhibition design by Botta, and wide-ranging supplementary exhibition histories and biographies compiled by Aldo Iori.
Yves Klein, born in 1928 in Nice, had as a first vocation to be a judoka. It was only back in Paris, in 1954, that he dedicated himself fully to art, setting out on his "adventure into monochrome".
Animated by a quest to "liberate colour from the prison that is the line", Yves Klein directed his attention to the monochrome which, to him, was the only form of painting that allowed to "make visible the absolute".
By choosing to express feeling rather than figurative form, Yves Klein moved beyond ideas of artistic representation, conceiving the work of art instead as a trace of communication between the artist and the world; invisible truth made visible. His works, he said, were to be "the ashes of his art", traces of that which the eye could not see.
Yves Klein's practice revealed of new way of conceptualising the role of the artist, conceiving his whole life as an artwork. "Art is everywhere that the artist goes", he once declared. According to him, beauty existed everywhere, but in a state of invisibility. His task was to to capture beauty wherever it might be found, in matter as in air.
The artist used blue as the vehicle for his quest to capture immateriality and the infinite. His celebrated bluer-than-blue hue, soon to be named "IKB" (International Klein Blue), radiates colourful waves, engaging not only the eyes of the viewer, but in fact allowing us see with our souls, to read with our imaginations.
From monochromes, to the void, to his "technique of living brushes" or "Anthropometry"; by way of his deployment of nature's elements in order to manifest their creative life-force; and his use of gold as a portal to the absolute; Yves Klein developed a ground-breaking practice that broke down boundaries between conceptual art, sculpture, painting, and performance.
Just before dying, Yves Klein told a friend, "I am going to go into the biggest studio in the world, and I will only do immaterial works."
Between May 1954 and June 6, 1962, the date of his death, Yves Klein burned his life to make a flamboyant work that marked his era and still shines today.
Born 1928 in Nice (France), French painter and sculptor Arman, a major figure of New Realism movement, died in 2005 in New York.
