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Yves Peintures
Yves Peintures (Eng: Yves Paintings) is an artist's book by the French artist Yves Klein, originally published in Madrid, on 18 November 1954. This publication was Klein's first public gesture as an artist, featuring pages of 'commercially printed papers' that were seemingly reproductions of paintings that, in fact, didn't exist. Using a practice started by Marcel Duchamp, this use of readymade objects to represent nothing but themselves has been referred to as an early example of Postmodernism, using a series of carefully executed strategies to undermine its own authority, and as a precursor to conceptual art. 'The simplicity of his readymades is at once sublime and mischievous.'
"The booklet asserts its character straightaway in the preface: a wordless text of unbroken horizontal lines with the same two paragraph indentations on each page.... a homogenous continuum with no real beginning, middle, or end, and no content - at least insofar as there are no descriptions, analyses, or personalized utterances. The colour plates are similarly presented as anonymous entities, each a flat spatial field of an uninflected hue: turquoise, brown, purple, green, pink, gray, yellow, ultramarine, mint, orange, or red. Here, too, there is no attempt to represent or symbolize anything....
The booklet thus offers an utterly pared down presentation. Unlike most art books, it provides no reverential prose about the artist or the art, and no embellishing descriptions meant to convey meaning or context. Instead the booklet itself is made into a work of art that shares the same spirit of nothingness exemplified by the monochrome paintings that it features." Sidra Stich
Klein had painted his first monochromes - paintings consisting of a single colour - whilst working in a framing shop in London in late 1949 which he exhibited in his room privately, inviting only friends. Initially influenced by his readings of Max Heindel's The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception or Mystic Christianity, which taught that 'space equals spirit and life, that matter is inert form, [and] that sponges and water symbolize the saturation of matter with spirit, he later rejected these teachings for a more rigorous study of the philosophy behind Judo, which involved long periods of meditation with his friends Arman and Claude Pascal.
His second private exhibition of monochromes took place whilst Klein was in Tokyo, late 1953, around the same time as he earned a diploma from the Kōdōkan Institute, as a fourth degree Dan, achieving the highest level possible for a European.
'The philosophy of Zen, which is essentially prevalent in Kōdōkan judo, being primarily concerned with an increased sensitivity for the present and an extended concept of space and time, [meant] a new form of spirituality for Klein, and [had] a direct effect upon his artistic activities.'
Upon his return to Paris in February 1954, he was deeply upset to discover that his diploma would not be officially recognised by the French Federation of Judo, meaning he could not officially teach or effectively participate in French Judo activities. He responded by publishing a book, Les Fondements du Judo, (see [1]), studying six Katas formulated by Kanō Jigorō in the 19th century, in an attempt to establish a reputation in France by circumventing the federation. Unable to teach in France, he took a post in Madrid in May. It was whilst he was in Spain that he formulated and published his first public gesture as an artist: Yves Peintures.
Yves Peintures is a small booklet, 24.4 cm by 19.7 cm, containing 16 sheets of unbound paper, each printed on one side only and 10 containing tipped-in sheets of coloured paper. Starting with a preface of 3 pages consisting entirely of horizontal black lines designed to parody a traditional introduction credited to ‘Pascal Claude’, (Claude Pascal, a close friend of Klein's), the introduction was actually designed by Klein himself, persuading Pascal to sign it to ‘certify the production’. 10 vivid monochromatic plates follow, mechanically signed ‘Yves’, each given unspecified numerical dimensions and assigned a large city.
Yves Peintures
Yves Peintures (Eng: Yves Paintings) is an artist's book by the French artist Yves Klein, originally published in Madrid, on 18 November 1954. This publication was Klein's first public gesture as an artist, featuring pages of 'commercially printed papers' that were seemingly reproductions of paintings that, in fact, didn't exist. Using a practice started by Marcel Duchamp, this use of readymade objects to represent nothing but themselves has been referred to as an early example of Postmodernism, using a series of carefully executed strategies to undermine its own authority, and as a precursor to conceptual art. 'The simplicity of his readymades is at once sublime and mischievous.'
"The booklet asserts its character straightaway in the preface: a wordless text of unbroken horizontal lines with the same two paragraph indentations on each page.... a homogenous continuum with no real beginning, middle, or end, and no content - at least insofar as there are no descriptions, analyses, or personalized utterances. The colour plates are similarly presented as anonymous entities, each a flat spatial field of an uninflected hue: turquoise, brown, purple, green, pink, gray, yellow, ultramarine, mint, orange, or red. Here, too, there is no attempt to represent or symbolize anything....
The booklet thus offers an utterly pared down presentation. Unlike most art books, it provides no reverential prose about the artist or the art, and no embellishing descriptions meant to convey meaning or context. Instead the booklet itself is made into a work of art that shares the same spirit of nothingness exemplified by the monochrome paintings that it features." Sidra Stich
Klein had painted his first monochromes - paintings consisting of a single colour - whilst working in a framing shop in London in late 1949 which he exhibited in his room privately, inviting only friends. Initially influenced by his readings of Max Heindel's The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception or Mystic Christianity, which taught that 'space equals spirit and life, that matter is inert form, [and] that sponges and water symbolize the saturation of matter with spirit, he later rejected these teachings for a more rigorous study of the philosophy behind Judo, which involved long periods of meditation with his friends Arman and Claude Pascal.
His second private exhibition of monochromes took place whilst Klein was in Tokyo, late 1953, around the same time as he earned a diploma from the Kōdōkan Institute, as a fourth degree Dan, achieving the highest level possible for a European.
'The philosophy of Zen, which is essentially prevalent in Kōdōkan judo, being primarily concerned with an increased sensitivity for the present and an extended concept of space and time, [meant] a new form of spirituality for Klein, and [had] a direct effect upon his artistic activities.'
Upon his return to Paris in February 1954, he was deeply upset to discover that his diploma would not be officially recognised by the French Federation of Judo, meaning he could not officially teach or effectively participate in French Judo activities. He responded by publishing a book, Les Fondements du Judo, (see [1]), studying six Katas formulated by Kanō Jigorō in the 19th century, in an attempt to establish a reputation in France by circumventing the federation. Unable to teach in France, he took a post in Madrid in May. It was whilst he was in Spain that he formulated and published his first public gesture as an artist: Yves Peintures.
Yves Peintures is a small booklet, 24.4 cm by 19.7 cm, containing 16 sheets of unbound paper, each printed on one side only and 10 containing tipped-in sheets of coloured paper. Starting with a preface of 3 pages consisting entirely of horizontal black lines designed to parody a traditional introduction credited to ‘Pascal Claude’, (Claude Pascal, a close friend of Klein's), the introduction was actually designed by Klein himself, persuading Pascal to sign it to ‘certify the production’. 10 vivid monochromatic plates follow, mechanically signed ‘Yves’, each given unspecified numerical dimensions and assigned a large city.