Yves Klein Quotes

I have written my name on the far side of the sky.

It taught me that the process was more important than the result, just as the performance means more to me than the object. I saw the process of making it and then the process of its unmaking. There was no duration or stability to it. It was pure process. Later on I read—and loved—the Yves Klein quote: “My paintings are but the ashes of my art.

Yves Klein said it was the essence of colour itself: the colour that stood for all other colours. A man once spent his entire life searching for a particular shade of blue that he remembered encountering in childhood. He began to despair of ever finding it, thinking he must have imagined that precise shade, that it could not possibly exist in nature. Then one day he chanced upon it. It was the colour of a beetle in a museum of natural history. He wept for joy.’ - "Zima Blue" by Alastair Reynolds

At present, I am particularly excited by "bad taste." I have the deep feeling that there exists in the very essence of bad taste a power capable of creating those things situated far beyond what is traditionally termed "The Work of Art." I wish to play with human feeling, with its "morbidity" in a cold and ferocious manner.

All I knew was the way that colour spoke to me, as if I'd been waiting my whole life to find it, to set it free." He thought for a moment. "There's always been something about blue. A thousand years ago Yves Klein said it was the essence of colour itself: the colour that stood for all other colours.

I was introduced to the void by the rebuffed nothingness. Reddedilmiş hiçlik tarafından boşlukla tanıştırıldım.

FV: Hasn't all art, in a way, submitted to words - reduced itself to the literary...admitted its failure through all the catalogues and criticism, monographs and manifestos — ML: Explanations? FV: Exactly. All the artistry, now, seems expended in the rhetoric and sophistry used to differentiate, to justify its own existence now that so little is left to do. And who's to say how much of it ever needed doing in the first place? [...] Nothing's been done here but the re-writing of rules, in denial that the game was already won, long ago, by the likes of Duchamp, Arp, or Malevich. I mean, what's more, or, what's less to be said than a single black square? ML: Well, a triangle has fewer sides, I suppose. FV: Then a circle, a line, a dot. The rest is academic; obvious variations on an unnecessary theme, until you're left with just an empty canvas - which I'm sure has been done, too. ML: Franz Kline, wasn't it? Or, Yves Klein - didn't he once exhibit a completely empty gallery? No canvases at all. FV: I guess, from there, to not exhibit anything - to do absolutely nothing at all - would be the next "conceptual" act; the ultimate multimedia performance, where all artforms converge in negation and silence. And someone's probably already put their signature to that, as well. But even this should be too much, to involve an artist, a name. Surely nothing, done by no-one, is the greatest possible artistic achievement. Yet, that too has been done. Long, long ago. Before the very first artists ever walked the earth.

…in front of any painting, figurative or non-figurative I felt more and more that the lines and all their consequences, the contours, the forms, the perspectives, the compositions, became exactly like the bars on the window of a prison. Far away, amidst colour, dwelt life and liberty. And in front of the picture I felt imprisoned, and I believe it is because of that same feeling of imprisonment that van Gogh exclaimed, ‘I long to be freed from I know now what horrible cage!

Sosem értettem, hogyan csinálják azok, akik egész életükben minimalisták. Őszintén szólva még Mondriant sem értem, aki pedig nem kifejezetten minimalista, de a De Stilj értelmét sosem fogtam fel. Eleinte biztos tök jó volt Mondriannak lenni, és a figuratív fákról áttérni a fekete vonalak és színes négyzetek alotta kétdimenziós és geometrius világba. Jól érzi magát tőle az ember. Jóval kevesebb gond van vele. Nem kell azzal gyötörnie magát, hogy arcképet, széket vagy csendéletet fessen. Reggel felkel, és csinál egy piros négyzetet meg két sárgát. Vagy Yves Klein azzal a faszom kékkel. Ó, anyám, milyen idegesítő Klein faszom kékje. Eleinte biztos jól érezte magát, amikor a kék képeit csinálta. Biztos azt gondolta, nagy ötlet. Biztos neki is jóval kevesebb gondja volt vele, még kevesebb, mint Mondriannak. Sosem kellett azon töprengnie, mit fessen, még csak azon sem, hogy egy négyzet vagy két négyzet vagy egy téglalap és öt négyzet legyen, mindig ugyanazt a kéket festette, az egész képet kékre. (…) Szóval fárasztó lehet Mondriannak és Kleinnek lenni egy életen át, kész fejlövés. Képzelem Klein feleségét, egy volt neki: „Szerelmem, gyere és nézd meg mit festettem!” Klein felesége megérkezett, és minthogy szerette, meg kellett játszania magát, és felkiáltania: „Szerelmem, ez gyönyörű! Még egy kék kép! Olyan büszke vagyok rád! Hogy jutott eszedbe?

...people should be able to say of me: He has lived, therefore he lives.