“Yves Klein: Conquistador of the Void,” 1982 PART 1 I'd Like to Welcome

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Yves Klein: Conquistador of the Void,” 1982

PART 1

SUSAN HIRSCHFIELD I’d like to welcome you. The program this afternoon will center upon Yves Klein, who, as you know, is the subject of the retrospective upstairs. The discussion will, we hope, provide you with some new insights, some historical perspective, and perhaps a positioning of Yves Klein’s work within the context of contemporary art. The panel this afternoon includes critics, art historians, and artists, some of whom knew Klein in the ’50s, and others who have come to know his work since then. The program this afternoon is a collaboration between the Guggenheim Museum and the Maison Française of Columbia University. I’d like to thank our colleagues at the Maison Française for their collaboration this afternoon. [01:00]

Right now I would like to introduce Professor Gerald Silk, of Columbia, who will be moderating the panel discussion. Thank you. (applause)

GERALD DOUGLAS SILK Thank you, Susan. I welcome you all. I think Yves Klein would have been pleased that an investigation of the void filled to the house. Of course the notoriety of the panel is obviously an attraction, and I’m delighted — and even a little humbled — to share the podium with so distinguished a group. I first want to introduce them to you, just identify them, and then before their remarks, which will come a little bit later, I’ll tell you a little bit more about them.

Arman, Nan Rosenthal — this is in order, from — would be your left to right — Arman, Nan Rosenthal, Thomas McEvilley, Olivier Mosset, Julian Schnabel, and Joseph Kosuth. And as Susan suggested, we have in this case [02:00] an artist who knew Klein intimately, two scholars who have researched and written on Klein with great sensitivity and insight, and three younger artists whose work suggests the inspiration, and in perhaps some ways the rejection, of Klein’s art and life.

The panel is entitled “Yves Klein: Conquistador of the Void.” With this as the subject, I am reminded of Guillaume Apollinaire’s description in his novel Le Poète Assassiné, of 1916, of the creation of a monument for a dead poet. In a discussion between the characters Tristouse and the Bird of Benin, Tristouse inquires as to what material the statue will be made out of. “Out of marble, out of bronze?” he asks. The Bird of Benin replies, “No, no, that’s too old-fashioned. It is necessary that I sculpt for him a profound statue out of nothing, like poetry and [03:00] glory.” “Bravo, bravo!” says Tristouse, clapping his hands. “A statue out of nothing, out of the void. That’s magnificent.”

Now, like the Bird of Benin in Apollinaire’s novel, Yves Klein, who would’ve been intrigued by this character suggestive of primitivism and flight, exalted emptiness, for in it, he believed, lay fullness. By eliminating form, the spirit is unleashed.

Ah, we have our final panelist, Pierre Restany. (pause)

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Yves Klein: Conquistador of the Void,” 1982

By eliminating form, the spirit is unleashed. This obsession with the void perfuses Klein’s art and life, the boundaries of which were often indistinguishable. Among its earliest manifestations were the monochromes, first appearing in the 1954 booklet Yves le [sic] Peintures as inked papers posing as reproductions of works whose existence at the time as full-fledged paintings appears [04:00] doubtful. The gesture was self-propagandizing, and Klein, in the manner of other great avant-garde self-promoters, such as Marinetti, Tzara, and Breton, cleverly knew how to mix public relations with personal mythology.

Apart from this, however, we have an allusion to works that are not physically palpable, that are instead imaginative and immaterial. When the monochromes do appear in 1955, first with different colors for different pieces, eventually in 1957 painted in his patented pigment called IKB — International Klein Blue — they represented color’s victory in a perhaps (inaudible) battle — one that was waged with great vehemence in the nineteenth century — color’s victory over that enslaving, incarcerating element in art: line. To Klein, line bounds, limits, divides, defines. Only is color [05:00] limitless, unifying, expansive, visionary — the stuff of the soul, prime matter.

These pieces, inaugurating Klein’s blue period, were hung at a distance from the wall, as if floating. Identical as they may have appeared, they were to be sold at varying prices. We ask, wherein resides the distinctions amongst these works? Obviously in the intangible, the immaterial, the spiritual: what Klein labeled “pure pictorial sensibility.”

He would later sell immaterial zones as works of art. In exchange for gold, Klein issued receipts for the zones. The purchaser was required to burn the receipts; otherwise the zones would be expunged of the spiritual essence. In return Klein promised to toss half the gold into an irretrievable place.

This “pure pictorial sensibility” is precisely what Klein [06:00] supposedly invested the rooms with at his infamous exhibition The Void of 1958. All the paraphernalia at the Iris Clert Gallery was removed. The inside walls were painted — or, might we say, purified — in white. Klein began meditating, pumping pure pictorial sensibility into the vacant gallery. Opening-night crowds arrived. They were served blue cocktails impregnated with Klein’s blue void, which they would urinate for some time after the exhibition.

In a similar vein Klein produced his blue sponges because they best embodied the notion of impregnation with pure color. These sea animals drenched in color were akin to viewers who, after having encountered Klein’s monochromes, soaked up their sensibility.

Maintaining his ambitiousness while escalating his daringness, Klein consorted with the elements in his cosmogonies, incorporating [07:00] fire, air, earth, and water into his works. In defiance of gravity and in an effort to interpenetrate with the void, Klein staged a leap from a second-story window, documented in a slyly montaged photograph entitled “A man in space: the painter of space hurling himself into the void.” Sandwiched in time between Sputnik’s catapult into orbit and cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becoming the first spaceman, the photo of the leap was published in Klein’s Dimanche, The Newspaper of a Single Day, in which he transformed the events of the world into a theater of the void.

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Yves Klein: Conquistador of the Void,” 1982

But in ensuing activities the scales tipped more toward theater and away from the void. His anthropometries were Happenings of a sort: nudes basted in paint, rubbing and imprinting their bodies on canvases, leaving haunting smears and vestiges. [08:00] Accompanied by the strains of Klein’s Monotone Symphony, witnessed by formally attired spectators, this performance further blurred the boundaries between art and sensationalism in Klein’s oeuvre. Moreover, what’s happened to the void? Although he called the anthropometries the product of immediate experience and not-form, it appears as if all that was taboo — contour, form, line, shape — has returned.

In addition, we should consider Klein’s role as a predecessor to Monochromism, Minimalism, Happenings, Performances, Environments, Conceptualism, and Process Art. If we are to credit Klein, we must, in turn, recognize his debt, unwitting or otherwise, to Duchamp, Malevich, and others.

While I’ve asked the panel to address Klein’s relationship to the void, I’ve suggested that they also consider his achievement in general, the self-mythologizing [09:00] aspects of his career, and in the midst of a current art fashion emphasizing imagery and expressionism, what his significance today may be.

Until recently, Klein has been somewhat neglected in the United States. In our attempt to redress this situation, we should be cautious, however, about becoming unsuspecting heirs to his self- promotion. Let’s evaluate Yves, for the same conquistador of the void who steeped himself in comic books, Rosicrucian texts, and Bachelard was also a religious mystic who made a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Rita, the patron of hopeless causes, depositing an ex-voto. In one breath he prayed that his works become ever more beautiful; in another, that his recently opened major retrospective in Krefeld be the greatest success of the century and be recognized by all; in yet another, that he and all his works be made totally invulnerable. [10:00]

Now to our speakers. Each will give a brief introductory statement. We will then have discussion among the panelists. Then the floor will be open to questions — and I might insist on this — not statements — from the audience.

In a review of the Yves Klein exhibition in the Friday New York Times, the critic Grace Glueck lamented that one element seemed to be missing from the show, and that was the presence of Klein himself. In this regard, it is fortunate to have as our first speaker the provocative critic and the founder of Nouveau Réalisme, Pierre Restany. It is Restany who, one commentator remarked, “wanted to become Yves”; and Restany himself, musing on Klein, said, “I owe him very, very much. I owe him both the structure of my thought and the conduct of my life.” Pierre Restany. (applause) [11:00]

PIERRE RESTANY Since the (inaudible) beautiful and brilliant speech, let us say, this kind of possessive assertion of myself towards Yves Klein. I think I will talk to you about cannibalism. (laughter) Well, listen. It is true that the structure of the panel — of which I am not responsible, I must say, so I can be quite positive — is done as a gathering of, let us say, Yves Klein’s eaters. The only thing is that

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Yves Klein: Conquistador of the Void,” 1982 the member of this panel do not eat Yves Klein and do not consume Yves Klein in the same way. Arman and myself have [12:00] consumed Yves Klein in a more physical, in a more everyday- life kind of communication. And so we can testify of our, let us say, real interchange and communication on a more physical basis.

People like Kosuth — that I can see are in the panel — or Olivier Mosset have consumed Yves Klein in a more, let us say, conceptual, of course, way. (laughter) But I don't want to kid and to make a easy kind of humorism about Kosuth, because I remember, when he was not so well known, I went once in his studio in (inaudible) Street, and what he show me on the wall was the [13:00] famous (inaudible), the Yves Klein Dimanche, as Silk said. And he said to me, “Well, that’s really a message for me. And it’s really a spring of meditation and reflection.” At that time — it was something like 15 years ago — it was not so easy to find people able to understand what’s Kleins could be as a potential message. And so those people are, let us say, [affective interpretivist?] of Yves Klein.

Now we have two distinguished panel member — a distinguished colleague of mine, McEvilley, and Nan Rosenthal — who have digested Yves Klein in a more intellectual and scholar way. So I start to believe that Yves Klein is a [14:00] very eatable, kind of fast-food (laughter) intellectual element. I am glad to see that. Now, I don't know why the distinguished (inaudible) Schnabel is here. Maybe he [broke?] the plates, you know, once Yves Klein has been eaten. That’s maybe something. (laughter) (applause)

OK. Well. You know, I wanted to create this kind of, let us say, psychological dimension of communication because those panels are just, you know, some kind of rituals, and one cannot take them very seriously. You know, and I think that the best homage that we can give to Yves Klein is [15:00] just to take some kind of fun about, let us say, the [invocation?] of his presence.

It’s very difficult to deal with people like Yves Klein because they are inspired. They are a special kind of [precious?]-like people. So, you know, it’s very simple, in a way. You have to play the game. You have to stay at the game. You have to understand that they have a inner [truth?] that they develop, and that their work in progress is just the [pre-size?] correspondence and connection with the development of the truth? itself.

And so if you [16:00] consider them as inspired people, you [see?] that maybe they have something to say to me. And, well, you believe them, and you give value to each step which is illustrated by the work. If not, everything becomes, of course, absolutely irrelevant and superficial. Yves Klein can be considered as a showman. Yves Klein can be considered as an idea man, as a kind of illuminated Rosicrucian. Yves can be considered as a judoka (inaudible) [orphan?] in his head, you know, not to have some kind of, let us say, mystic kind of brain situation.

All that can be true, because all those people belong to a [17:00] very rare species, which is to be, let us say, more vitalist-oriented than anything else. Those people [who?] believe that between the matter and the spirit there is a third order which is absolutely autonomous and which is called sensitivity. Those people work between matter and spirit through the channel of sensitivity.

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Yves Klein: Conquistador of the Void,” 1982

Vitalism is an old philosophy, and in that sense it is true that Yves Klein is maybe one of its most current illustrator. But by the way, I notice that a lot of people now tend to credit Yves Klein to be a kind of pioneering master [18:00] in Conceptual art, in body art, in space art, and so on. That means that maybe a lot of our heart today has to do with vitalism. He was a fanatic vitalist. Maybe you have some shameful vitalist, you know. Just like about sex some people [like?] (inaudible) or fanatic, you see. You have shamefully homosexual; you have fanatic homosexual, and so on, you know. That may be true for vitalism too, which is a kind of in-between structure of the sensitivity of man. And it is this in-betweenness, if I may say, which is really the spatial, autonomous dimension of Yves Klein, and also the spring of very ambiguous [19:00] kind of interpretation.

Well, it is true that I had the chance of living near him. By the way, it’s Arman who created the contact between us. And it was for me a very big experience because he made me understand that between matter and spirit there was a sensitivity, and this sensitivity field is a field of self rhythm, is a field of endeavor, is a field of any kind of mental (inaudible). And he gave me this kind of spirit of adventure, and I am grateful to him.

Well, that’s what I wanted to say to you, and — well. Let us eat Yves Klein now, slice by slice, in our proper way.

GERALD DOUGLAS SILK Thank you. (applause) [20:00] (applause)

GERALD DOUGLAS SILK Arman?

Can you hear me? A few brief words about Arman while I sit here. Thank you for the hors d’oeuvres, and now to the next course.

Our good fortune continues today in having another intimate of Yves Klein, Arman, with us, and his own figure graces the show in the form of a Klein sculpture. Arman is a distinguished artist in his own right, associated with Nouveau Réalisme. He is best known for his accumulations, recently completing a monumental sculpture entitled Long Term Parking, a 65-foot accumulation of 60 actual automobiles.

In 1948, three young men carved up the world in their imaginations. One claimed the plants; another usurped the sky; the third commandeered the animals. As you may have guessed, Yves Klein seized the sky. May I introduce the possessor of the animal kingdom: Arman.

ARMAN Hi. [21:00] (applause)

As a witness of part of the life of Yves Klein, and as always witnesses are, it’s a subjective account of what happened. It’s a little bit like in the movie Rashomon: every witness has a vision, which is not exactly the same one that the other witness. And sometimes people coming

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Yves Klein: Conquistador of the Void,” 1982 after the event to studying the event can have a better view than the witness, who was too close to the main event.

I saw that recently, reading the essay of Tom — Tom McEvilley — and I found through that [they say?] Yves’s very alive, and I was very, very glad about that.

Yves was very special, as Pierre Restany point out. In the time he exercise his power in the void, in monochrome banding, his uniqueness in France, where everything was [measured?] in good taste, was special. Yves didn’t have any good taste. He have strength, [punch?]. And [the whole?] things seems to be apart, but he was in the pursuit of kind of a holy grail on his own that has nothing to do with the Holy Grail.

Every time you put a label on Yves — Rosicrucian, or knight of Saint Sebastian, [23:00] or judo master, or any of those label — a vampire. He liked to have picture taken of him disguised as a vampire — it’s always like some primitive people acquiring knowledge and religion or politics and transforming that at the scale of their vision of the world. Yves had the power to transform the Rosicrucianism, the Zen Buddhism, the judo, the Saint Sebastian (inaudible) in his own right.

And everything he was doing was first Yves Klein. He had a kind of difficult power to be able to channel all his energy in one direction, not being interested by nothing else. When he devoted his self to judo, it was judo — even if [24:00] before that he expressed some ideas about monochromy, his energy was channeled to accomplish something in judo. When he switched to art — if I can call it art, which is, with Yves Klein, always very special — all his energy was devoted in that direction. On the very uncommon way. If we were seated together, speaking about a lot of things, if the conversation was not really be in the direction that something that Yves could use, he would just sit there motionless, like a block. If one word or one sentence triggered something in him, it was [activated?] like a robot and very alive, very magnetic, very bright, and sudden active. [25:00] He had a power to absorb, also like a sponge, every bit of information he could use in the direction of what he was doing at a time he was doing it. He had both an enormous sense of humor and not humor at all when he comes to his own art. He was dead serious about what he was doing. Eventually he died because he was so dead serious. He had a terrible tantrum, and he died of an heart attack after several rage about different things that was oblitering [sic] his path on the direction of accomplishing things.

I see him sometime now in the past like a character escaping from a comic book: Captain Blue, in pursuit of the blue holy grail. But extremely naïve and childish, [26:00] very shrewd and intelligent, and dead serious about what he was doing. (applause)

GERALD DOUGLAS SILK Our next speaker is Nan Rosenthal, associate professor of art history at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She’s written scores of articles on modern art and curated numerous exhibitions. I assume she raised some eyebrows and perhaps broke a few barriers, not only by making Yves Klein the subject of her doctoral dissertation but also because she did so at Harvard University. Her essay Assisted Levitation in the catalogue for this show was of great assistance to me in my boning up on Klein, and like her work in general it is insightful and intelligent. Nan Rosenthal.

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Yves Klein: Conquistador of the Void,” 1982

NAN ROSENTHAL Thank you, Gerald. (applause) Also, thank you, Pierre. I have never known found studying [27:00] Yves Klein to be “fast food,” but food it was.

Could I have the first two slides, please? [I think you want to?] — thank you.

Thursday evening after seeing the exhibition, a very close friend of mine who is a noted birdwatcher asked me — she said she had one question — did this man really throw himself out of a second-story window? The subtext in the question is, I think, did this romantic genius really risk his life for his art? I think the answer is that the famous photographic self-portrait of Klein flying — which you see on the left — leaping into the void — this is one of many examples in his work of what I call conspicuous fraudulence. [28:00] I mean by this not that Klein was a fraud. I mean that he was an artist who was designing fraudulence into his work in order that it was manifest. The flying self-portraits are structured, I think, to call attention to the likelihood that what they denote at first glance — that a man can fly — is a fiction.

Klein had the self-portraits made in October 1960 for the front page of his fake edition of the Paris newspaper Dimanche, which you see at the right. Now, we could read the photo as a very compelling example of transcendence, an icon of transcendence — only, in this case, the human image in ascension is neither a Winged Victory nor a member of the Holy Trinity. It is the artist. And I think this reminds us that [29:00] it is often artists and not gods who are peopling modern myths. But if we look closely, I think we’ll see that while Klein appears to be dramatizing his own myth, he is actually raising questions about the idealist tradition, about our belief in the divine-inspired capacities of artists.

Within six weeks of published the flying self-portrait in Dimanche, Klein published it again, in the catalogue of his retrospective at the museum in Krefeld, Germany.

May I have the next on the right, please.

That was the one he published in Krefeld.

And may I have the next on the left too.

OK. That’s the page in the Krefeld catalogue. And I think you can even find right there on that page a few other examples of conspicuous fraudulence, such as holding fire in your right hand and other things.

And now let [30:00] me have the next on the left [again?].

OK. Now, in the second publication by Klein, the upper part of the picture, with the image of Klein making his leap is absolutely identical to the image he published in Dimanche. However, the little man on the bicycle that you see on the street has been removed. And so, I think, have any doubts about whether or not the photo is a photomontage.

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Yves Klein: Conquistador of the Void,” 1982

Now, these photomontages were crafted by a photography team, Harry Shunk and [Jean?] Kender. They were shooting from a tripod, which was facing down the street, and they had to shoot at least three times, once with the little man on the bicycle on the street, once without him, and, as a matter of fact, several more times with Klein diving upward off the wall. As he dove upward off the wall, about a dozen of his judo companions stood underneath him with a tarpaulin [31:00] to catch him as he sprang. The splicing of the upper and the lower portions of the montages was done in the darkroom.

Now, I think there are many ways to read this instance of conspicuous fraudulence. I think to Klein’s contemporary audience the image read not so much as an icon of transcendence or liberation from cares but as a metaphor of existential risk — this in part because the extravagant image implied real physical risk: an artist willing to die or break bones and, like Van Gogh, endure pain for his art.

But I think by Klein’s serial publication of the two images — and by a number of other means we haven’t time for here today — by showing us himself that the self-portrait is a photomontage, Klein has set us [32:00] up to catch him in the act of faking existential risk. He thus presented doubts about whether existential acts work. I think it seemed to him that the existential acts being undertaken in many studios of Montparnasse did not work and were not above suspicion. As Robert Rauschenberg put it around the same time, “The kind of talk you heard then in the art world was so hard to take.” I’m quoting Rauschenberg. “It was all about suffering and self- expression and ‘the state of things.’”

With the flying self-portraits, Klein constructed a myth which, during the time that he was working, was possibly more believable than the myth or ideology of the previous generation. That myth had been repeated so often in Klein’s Paris that it had lost its force and at times seemed like little more than bad faith. By revealing his tricks, I think Klein shows us that he is honest.

Thank you. (applause) [33:00] (applause)

GERALD DOUGLAS SILK If there’s a case to be made that a solid grounding in the classics is indispensable to addressing the intellectual issues of today, then Thomas McEvilley stands as its paragon. Trained in the classics, he brings a rare freshness fused with erudition to the study of art history. His monographic essay on Klein in the catalogue to the exhibition is one of the best profiles of an artist I have read in some time. He has taught at Rice and at St. Thomas Universities in Houston and is currently a contributing editor to Artforum. Thomas McEvilley. (applause)

THOMAS MCEVILLEY I’m going to show some slides too, so perhaps we’ll bring the lights down and start with the slide on the right.

That’s not mine. That’s it.

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Yves Klein: Conquistador of the Void,” 1982

I’m going to [34:00] talk briefly today about what I see as the central ethical question posed by Klein’s life and career, and that is the problem of the quest for freedom and its tendency to become lost in an infinite regress. Along the way we’ll come to an interesting point of disagreement on fact.

First let’s consider that fundamental procedure of Conceptual art, the procedure of appropriating existing things into the art realm by signing them or otherwise designating them as art. Yves Klein pressed this procedure to extremes which reveal it as an inherently circular process. In about 1947, for example, he declared that he had signed the sky as his first artwork.

In the slide which we’re looking at now we see him some years later, gazing at a globe of the earth which he had painted International Klein Blue, thereby in effect [35:00] appropriating it into his portfolio.

The infinite regress that is implicit in this procedure is illustrated by the next slide, please — a work by Piero Manzoni, made later in the same year, 1961, and called Base of the World. If you can make out the letters on that sculpture base, you see that they are upside down — that is to say, the concept is if the slide were exactly upside down, the earth would be resting on Piero Manzoni’s sculpture base. By placing the earth upon his sculpture base, Manzoni, in effect, wrested it from Klein’s portfolio into his own.

This series of one-upping acts of appropriation was continued by Ben Vautier, who in 1962 signed Yves Klein’s death as his own work. In the following [36:00] year, Ben signed Piero Manzoni’s death also, thus appropriating into his own portfolio both of these appropriators of the universe.

Klein’s acts of universal appropriation were expressions of the central ethical theme of his life — that is, the quest for freedom — and they raised the question whether the quest for freedom itself is an infinite regress. By incorporating a certain realm of experience under the name of freedom, one makes freedom merely another realm of experience, thus relativizing it and making it in turn something to be escaped from. From an early age, Klein expressed the desire to be free, really, in this world and acted out this desire in many ways.

Next slide, please.

In terms of his career as an artist, this desire for freedom from existing categories led to the mixing of media such as painting and performance [37:00] and above all to the immaterial works, which were intended to overleap all categories of art as previously known. In terms of his personal spiritual quest, the desire for freedom took the radical form of a discontent with the very conditions of space-time and embodiment.

The work which perhaps acts out this double quest most radically is the Leap into the Void, shown in this famous photograph and in some other, mostly unpublished, ones, such as the next side, please.

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Yves Klein: Conquistador of the Void,” 1982

The question of the authenticity of this leap, which Nan has just addressed, is central to the question of whether Klein’s commitment to his quest was real or feigned. By “authenticity,” I mean the similar question whether he actually exposed himself to the bodily danger and injury implied in the photograph. In fact, as has been widely rumored for decades, this photograph is a [38:00] photomontage. The leap, as Nan said, was performed over a net held by 13 accomplices, and if there should remain any doubt about this, let’s look at the next slide, which is an untouched photograph from the same event.

(laughter) But the investigation — and here we come to my point of disagreement on fact — it is, let’s say, a point on which Nan and I have agreed to disagree — does not end there. Other evidence, which is documented in the catalogue of the exhibition, indicates that Klein did make unprotected leaps from which he sustained bodily injury on at least two occasions before witnesses.

Let’s have the next slide, please.

I don’t mean to imply that this is a photograph of another leap. This is a beautiful photograph of the same event. [39:00] This raw physical fact is basic to an understanding of the level and quality of Klein’s commitment. It is also worth mentioning that at least two later performance artists have made such unprotected leaps inspired by the original photograph published by Klein. What I want to point to is the mere fact that the gesture could be appropriated, that it could originate a series or category of events. This fact suggests a circularity to the quest itself.

Yves Klein spoke of the goal of freeing sculpture from the base. In the Leap photograph, he in effect presents himself as a sculpture freed from the base. Yet at the same time, though freed from the base, he is caught in the frame. The real question here is this: is the quest for freedom from frameworks and categories simply another [40:00] framework or category?

Next slide, please.

In terms of avant-gardism in art, which seeks freedom from the game by constantly changing the rules, we must realize that if changing the rules is the game, then no change in the rules can constitute an escape from the game. When the ancient philosopher Diogenes sought freedom from convention by doing everything backwards, was he simply inventing another convention? In terms of art, can art exceed the art context and remain art, an apparent contradiction in terms? In terms of life, can people escape from the pedestal of their own concepts without finding themselves caught within the concept of escape?

Next slide, please. I think there is one more.

MALE One more?

FEMALE (inaudible)

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Yves Klein: Conquistador of the Void,” 1982

THOMAS MCEVILLEY [41:00] That’s all right. As a matter of fact, just relax. We’ll do it in the dark. Since questions are ultimately more interesting to me than answers, I will simply point to this one as a cultural object in its own right and will focus it one final time through a parable of the poet [Marfreedan?], who wrote this: “Robot Robert knew he was a robot, knew he was programmed to know it, suspected that he was programmed to rebel against it. Question: Can Robot Robert bust his program with full assurance that he has not been programmed to bust it?” Thank you. (applause)

GERALD DOUGLAS SILK Thank you very much.

It was Olivier Mosset who was among the first to propose [42:00] a panel on Yves Klein to accompany the current exhibition. Mosset, a young French painter working in America in a monochromatic manner, recognizes roots in Yves Klein that he feels deserves investigation. As an artist himself Mosset has had many gallery shows since the late 1960s. At that time he was a member of the BMPT group in Paris, producing Minimal works consisting exclusively of one small black circle on a large white ground and staging performances, both of which he felt displayed a [terrorist?] attitude. Today with his monochromes he’s content to see his work as “just painting, just doing my job.” Olivier Mosset. (applause)

OLIVIER MOSSET Well, I remember the first Yves Klein monochrome I saw. And although I was, at that time, rather young, this blue panel was, at the time of the art of School of Paris, really something stunning. [43:00] It was, I am sure, as stunning as could be a painting with an American flag at the time of the Tenth Street type of Abstraction.

Of course, Yves Klein was a forerunner of a lot of things that happened afterwards. And I have the feeling that here, in America, he still doesn’t have the position he deserves — although we’re sort of working on it. (laughs) Now, there might be some reason for that. And I also have some kind of reserve. It is true that if you compare, for instance, a catalogue of this exhibition and the catalogue of the Jackson Pollock exhibition at (inaudible), Yves Klein just looks like a lightweight, or maybe somewhere else. And you might even want to forget all the mystical hodgepodge that surrounds Klein’s work. But on the other way, when you see the show you can still be impressed by what is here onstage.

Now, about his legacy, there are painters working right now in New York whose paintings have been [44:00] called monochromatic or monochromes. And I know some of them. And of course from time to time some outsider mentions Yves Klein’s work. But I have the feeling that these painters not only have each different position one from another, but also, I think, (inaudible) from Klein — because basically they are painters, as Yves Klein was, and so himself as an artist, or whatever that mean. And I think it’s in fact two different approach to art.

Now to speak about the void. It’s a complex concept, whether in itself or in its development in art history. And furthermore, this void business — I don’t really know how to define it and what it’s all about — tends to imply some kind of filling up, and Arman knew that, who had a show at

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Yves Klein: Conquistador of the Void,” 1982 the gallery where Klein showed with, and he filled up the gallery. And as a [45:00] friend of mine said, “Yves Klein just filled the void with ideas.”

Also, as an artist, it seems to be paradoxical to speak about Yves Klein’s legacy, because, in fact, I think that one of his strengths was Yves Klein’s ability of having been able to cut himself from the dominant tendency of the art of his time.

That’s it. (applause)

GERALD DOUGLAS SILK Thank you, Olivier.

The meteoric rise to fame of Julian Schnabel has dazzled the art world. You must be hearing this often.

JULIAN SCHNABEL I’ll tell you what — why don’t you skip mine.

GERALD DOUGLAS SILK OK, go ahead. (laughter)

MALE (inaudible)

JULIAN SCHNABEL I think this is just a minor anecdote to anything that Thomas might have said, and maybe I am just here as a witness of this [46:00] point in time or something. Well, I think everybody probably knows this also, but I’ll say it again, and it’s just a notion that I had about Yves Klein’s importance or pertinence to what is going on now or my work or — anyway, I’ll start.

The notion of usage, the first different than Duchamp, building rather than just presenting a vector or a transmitter to get at an ideational place, the notion of building something and identifying as well as imbuing it with a set of possibilities that if used make up a functional cosmology and a poetic space that in turn identifies the object through this exchange and can establish a specific acculturated meaning that could make possible the existence of a blue painting that’s not just a blue painting. The notion of acculturated meaning is elusive because it’s hard to discern the meanings of things, the very different meanings and intentions that have a similar appearance. The other side is to misunderstand by [47:00] projecting what one knows on an object and being deluded by its appearance: what some might call subjectivity. We get to the notion of a system of beliefs that is described by a specific work and its relation to the last work and the next. Through the accumulative layering of these objects or actions and their correlation to each other, one can enter the consciousness of the work, the ideational space, and make a judgment about its value in approximating or realizing a quality of life.

The notion of usage is what I believe so pertinent about his work. Attaching meaning to something, declaring, naming its meaning, and by naming, making possible a catalogue of associations and ideas that can be denoted by a color or the use of specific materials. It is

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Yves Klein: Conquistador of the Void,” 1982 obvious to me that his work had nothing to do with Reductivism. One reason for the misunderstanding and this belated appreciation of Yves Klein’s work in America [48:00] has been the inability of American critics and public to look at work iconographically instead of in terms of its surface. These are highly imagistic works.

That’s it.

(break in recording)

(applause)

PART 2

JOSEPH KOSUTH ...(inaudible). Those objects, that physical residue of that activity, is simply the trace of such a life. Yves Klein was one of the few artists who could teach us this. And in a particular way, his work, like the best art, didn’t provide answers; it raised questions.

The more conventional forms of his activity remain, get celebrated, and seem more conspicuous, of course, because life tends to be conventional, and people want art to match it. This exhibition upstairs, like so many exhibitions, teaches us a lot about an artist’s work by showing what, by necessity, must be left out — parenthetically, I would add, for the artist here today, I suggest you read the excellent catalogue as well as look at the objects which made it into the exhibition — the point being that artists who only see the objects in art are doomed to make art like an art historian, the probable route to money and mediocrity. [01:00]

Well, for Yves Klein, whose first work was to sign the sky, exhibitions like this one can only be a shadow of the real activity that made his work important, because, as we know, the sky will never fit into a museum. Of the lessons to be learned about the art of our century, and Klein’s work shows this, is that if art is a game, it is about making rules, not following them. Klein’s work has the power of authenticity because it was singular, uncompromising. No one else could have done it. In this sense it was the expression of one human being.

But the work wasn’t about these things. It wasn’t about being expressive. It was expressive in the act of one man trying to make art visible to himself and doing so in a way which helped others see it. (applause) [02:00] (applause]

GERALD SILK At this time I would like to ask whether there are members of the panel who want to comment on perhaps some of the other statements by [members of?] — Arman.

ARMAN Yes. I want to speak about two [havens?] that I’ve seen, I’ve been witness. And Pierre, we remember certainly one. It’s about the leap. After the publication of Dimanche, Yves has been question, challenge, about the possibility of make thats leap. And finally one day, at the Galerie

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Yves Klein: Conquistador of the Void,” 1982

Rive Droite, he decide to give a demonstration of the possibility of leaping from a certain height. The Galerie Rive Droite had a inside stair going to the second floor. He went. [03:00] He climbed to the last stairs, about, I would say, 10 feet. And, without any net or any protection, jump and make a breakdown, a judo breakdown, on the floor of the gallery. He hurt himself, strained his right shoulder. [I’ve been buttering?] him for two weeks, at least. I don't thinks he could jump from the second story of a building without hurting himself in the same fashion. As a practitioner of judo myself and training with Yves for years, I know the possibility and the impossibility. But I believe in the appropriation of the — in the vision of Yves Klein, of the jump on the void and on the man in the space.

The second event took place [04:00] at the Galerie Colette Allendy. It was at the end of the first show. The first show include — 56 years — includes several monochromes of different colors, and Yves didn’t like too much the proximity of different colors together, being afraid that it will be interpreted as all as a composition like Mondrian or Bauhaus’s connection of color between themself. But, as Yves was very curious, Colette Allendy told him about the Dr. Allendy, psychoanalyst that wrote books about art and analysis. And the office of the Dr. Allendy was on the second floor. And she showed to Yves the desk where the Dr. Allendy wrote. At the time the Dr. Allendy [05:00] was dead, died. And Yves was very impressed, and he said, “Oh, I can feel the sense of presence of the Dr. Allendy there. But I want to do something.” And he come close to the window that was up facing the garden, [was?] a [stove?], and he said, “There. I’m going to put a zone of immaterial pictoral sensivity [sic].” It was the first time Yves, at my knowledge, mentioned the idea of immaterial pictoral sensivity [sic].

PIERRE RESTANY Well, listen, if we are in this kind of historical — what are you doing? You understand me? (laughter) Well, we [06:00] can complete that too, if you want. I wanted to spare you this kind of thing. But let’s do that, since we are witnesses, and maybe it’s our duty to say that.

I want to complete Arman’s statement by two things. First, it’s true that in the first Collette Allendy show in Paris in 1956, when he showed different colored monochrome, he discovered that room in the second floor of the building, and that he decided to create that as a [right?]. And by the way he decided that it was an immaterial zone of sensitivity and that only one person at once should be allowed in it. So he was already created a right [area too?].

Now, I would like to [07:00] comment a little bit the story of the famous leap into space, and with all the mystery which is [abound?]. The mystery was created on purpose by Yves Klein, and while I reckon that he tried to bound all the witnesses and all the people who had to deal with him about the fact by the kind of moral [house?] or a kind of moral sermon that what he did with photographs and that the reason why the secret was kept so long. This may be only through the power of Machiavellian (inaudible) together that a few documents could come into the open air. And when I ask him why [08:00] he was doing such a mystery about that, he said to me, “Don’t forget that you are entering into space-time, and that will be [the bounds?] of my contribution to the space legend. But I don't think that Gagarin and the other will last just as much as me.”

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Yves Klein: Conquistador of the Void,” 1982

So, you see, he had another kind of feeling about space, of course, than the cosmonauts. But remember that all those events were absolutely [contemporary?], and that his leap into space is exactly contemporary to the Gagarin trip of a few months. So that’s also is something to consider, that he was absolutely very conscious and aware of this possibility of creating a legend — and, by the way, it was true! Look. We have [centered?] all this kind of (inaudible) about this leap. So it is a posteriori [09:00] good testimony of his rightness and of his sense of timing this kind of important and (inaudible) events.

He had a very strong sense of time, of course. And at that moment this reference of his personal leap into space [intonation?] was a spectacular beginning of the cosmonaut adventure. It was quite interesting. Because it was a kind of challenge. The space age of the NASA and of the Russian cosmonauts is based on technology. The space vision of Yves Klein is based upon sensitivity, affectivity, and, let us say, [experimental?] knowledge. It’s quite different.

And [10:00] I remember that Yves Klein have been very much impressed when Gagarin, the first man into the space, came back into Russia and — you remember, surely, that all of the politburo was in the Kremlin, in the Red Square, and they had made him a real red-carpet treatment — something like 200 yards of red carpet — and Gagarin, you know, in (inaudible) [uniform?] came and went to see Khrushchev and said to Khrushchev, “Comrade Khrushchev, the mission that the politburo of the Communist Party [had offered?] to me has been completed.” That mean that already the big technological power that Khrushchev was, and he is, had decided to demystify the space adventure. Gagarin was consider just like a technician, that a man [with?] scope was to be a normal man into unnatural, exceptional conditions of survival, which is a space survival. And, by the way, the NASA people did the same. All the mythology of the cosmonauts is an anti-mythology. You see them just now normal men. They have a family life. Sometimes it gets crazy, but they become preachers. And if they don’t get crazy they become chairmen of business companies, you see. (laughter) So they are really, in that sense, just natural men, and non-conquistadores, and non-really — you know, our civilization has decided not to create new conquistadores [12:00] with the cosmonaut people. And that’s very interesting to consider that. So the space age is just a technical [step?] in [total?] general technological evolution. And the people in charge of that have just (inaudible) normal men into special condition of living into space.

GERALD SILK Pierre —

PIERRE RESTANY (inaudible) that’s very important. And —

GERALD SILK — we...

PIERRE RESTANY — by (inaudible), Yves Klein wanted to signify something else. So I think that this shows the choice of “Conquistador of the Void” as a general title for the meeting. It’s quite good as a historical reference. Because he was living another adventure of space [while?] the NASA and the Russian were just developing their technological kind of progress.

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Yves Klein: Conquistador of the Void,” 1982

GERALD SILK Olivier, did you have something to say?

OLIVIER MOSSET [No?], I just wanted to say [a lot of?] the people here on the panel that I think that there are other American artists were very early interested in Yves Klein. I think Larry Rivers wrote an article — that I haven’t read — very early, and it’s also somebody who could — so — well, that’s it.

MALE (inaudible) keynotes for the (inaudible).

OLIVIER MOSSET Oh, keynotes also.

MALE Yeah.

OLIVIER MOSSET Oh.

GERALD SILK Tom?

THOMAS MCEVILLEY Can I get into this for a moment? I like this way of using it too. (laughter)

Back to the fascinating photograph called the Leap. I can agree with Nan that by publishing the photograph at one time with the bicyclist and at one time without it Yves is definitely teasing and tempting his audience, as he always did. At the same time, I referred to audience which supports the fact that on at least two occasions outside of the photographed day, Yves did make unprotected leaps. One of these two that I was referring to is the one that Arman just described. The other one was from a second-story ledge [14:00] outside, in Collette Allendy’s garden. It’s documented in the catalogue. I would also like to suggest or just mention, in terms of the publication of the photograph now with the bicyclist and now without it, that there is a tantalizing rumor that the bicyclist in the photograph also is Yves himself. (laughter)

GERALD SILK Nan, you want to...

NAN ROSENTHAL Yes. The point I was trying to make is that the two public Leap photos that we have are works of art published by the artist. What he did leaping around in his own time is one thing. I want to make a distinction between a work of art that he published and a piece of private biography. To support that, let me just read one paragraph of the text which Klein published in Dimanche to accompany the first Leap photo. This is even without the second photo. “The Monochrome, who is also a fourth dan black belt judo champion, regularly practices dynamic [15:00]

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Yves Klein: Conquistador of the Void,” 1982 levitation.” Then Klein writes, “With or without a net, at the risk of his life.” The point is the artist in his own text is painting the reader to the possibility that there was a net.

GERALD SILK Two footnotes to the leap: in an announcement for one of Julian Schnabel’s shows there is a photograph that is quite reminiscent of, in fact, this leap. And about a week ago I saw at OK Harris work, the artist whose name now escapes me, of a leap what seems to be the top rung of the Guggenheim into the void. So that seems to be continuing as part of the iconography.

JULIAN SCHNABEL I mean, there’s some Andy Warhol pictures of people jumping out of buildings, also.

GERALD SILK I don’t want to —

JULIAN SCHNABEL So what?

GERALD SILK — deny the — (laughter) I don't want to deny the audience a chance to ask questions, because we are running short on time. Are there questions? [16:00] I think that the acoustics are good enough so that you can just do it right from your seat. Are there questions?

Yes.

FEMALE I’d like to ask those members of the panel who are so insistent on his leaping and hurting himself and all that what they have invested in that. I mean, why they think it’s important that he hurt himself and that he leaped [actually?]. What importance is that?

ARMAN Well, I guess they try to point out if Yves was sincere or not. That’s the [potential?] of the discussion about if he really risk his life or didn’t risk his life, if he was serious about risking his life and the accomplishment of that [leap?]. I guess that’s what’s the point.

JULIAN SCHNABEL Hello. Wait, let me just say something about [17:00] that. I think it has to do with a notion of distance and with a notion of something being fictive or metaphoric and an idea about what is really happening. One of the things that you have to understand about all things, I imagine, is that they do exist in a context. So I think they’re just trying to enlighten you to what they think the context really was to give you some kind of clue to what the truth might have been.

FEMALE [I don't think that’s?] true.

JULIAN SCHNABEL You don’t think that’s true.

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Yves Klein: Conquistador of the Void,” 1982

FEMALE (inaudible) [entirely?].

JULIAN SCHNABEL Uh-huh. Why?

FEMALE (inaudible) true. I think they’re mystifying something that is mysterious enough to begin with, and I don’t buy that [mystical?] (inaudible).

JULIAN SCHNABEL Uh-huh. OK. Well, I mean, I think they have two opposite positions on this. So you’re just disagreeing with both of them for being interested in that?

FEMALE No. That’s not what I’m saying. You’re misinterpreting what I’m saying. I am saying that this certain investment in a vision of this hero-artist — if he wanted to be [18:00] heroic, he could have gone to the eleventh floor. That would have been heroic.

MALE I think...

JULIAN SCHNABEL That would have been dumb! (laughter)

ARMAN If you want you can try.

PIERRE RESTANY Well, listen, you don’t measure the heroism of somebody when he jumps to the quantity of floors, you see.

MALE Well, I think it’s a different thing. There is a Japanese artist who actually did this.

MALE And he jumped from the eleventh floor?

MALE This is an Austrian tradition too. (laughter) (applause)

GERALD SILK There was a question over there. OK. Right here?

FEMALE This is the point of what Nan Rosenthal said, not whether he left and picked himself up off the floor — and, as you say, he obviously knew he could leap from two stories and recover and so

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Yves Klein: Conquistador of the Void,” 1982 on — but simply that he made photographs of himself doing it, and published them, showed that they were (inaudible). And I think Professor (inaudible) —

ARMAN Well...

FEMALE — is making a good point to say there’s a certain amount of [fraudulence?] [19:00] (inaudible) which he [tried?] to achieve [now?] (inaudible)...

ARMAN But that is different. He was able to leap from a certain height, but the document would not have been very good. And I guess he had already the sense, which is our now modern sense of self- publication that many artists use now to try, to get a good document that could be readable by everybody and this [understandable right?] at the first site. But he was able to make, and he did try, some of those jumps, and he hurt himself. OK, then try to kill himself, that was not the goal — the main goal. But I guess the photomontage was just to get a good, clean, readable, exonerating document that could just be a work of art in itself, like a Conceptual work of art.

NAN ROSENTHAL But Arman, he went to great efforts to publish the [20:00] different second image in the Krefeld catalogue. He wrote to the museum directors three or four times, insisting on the publication of a different photo. I mean, it wasn’t just...

ARMAN There was a lapse of time between the two —

NAN ROSENTHAL About six weeks.

ARMAN — the two photos, and maybe he had already so many discussion about that.

GERALD SILK Another question there?

FEMALE I was very glad to see that Nan Rosenthal included (inaudible) Jean Kender in the photograph (inaudible) [publication?]. Because originally it was a team of photographers, and more recently it’s been attributed to one photographer and [became a?] sort of personal situation between the two of them. I was going to ask what do you consider the contribution of the photographers, [because?] Jean Kender told me a number of years ago that it was the photographers who had — there’s another difference (inaudible) two pictures, [which is the boy?] on the bicycle. [21:00] There’s a train in the station.

MALE (off-mic) I didn’t hear the question.

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Yves Klein: Conquistador of the Void,” 1982

GERALD SILK Did everyone hear —

NAN ROSENTHAL That’s true. That’s true.

GERALD SILK — did everyone hear the question? It was that what was...

MALE That’s not a question.

FEMALE There’s a train in the station in addition to the boy on the bicycle.

MALE Sure.

FEMALE And Jean Kender told me a number of years ago that the photographers had waited specifically for the train to come into the station as they waited for the boy on the bicycle. But [with?] that — at least they had some contribution, I wonder...

NAN ROSENTHAL Well, I think, as Pierre pointed out before, Yves was a kind of cannibal. I certainly regard those photographs as his work and not as Shunk and Kender’s work. He believed deeply in collaboration — it was something that interested him tremendously — and was willing, as you’ve both said, to take assistance wherever he could get it. But I really think that we have to regard those works as Klein’s rather than...

FEMALE (inaudible) collaboration?

PIERRE RESTANY No, well, listen. I will tell you something. [22:00] The collaboration that Nan is alluding to is the collaboration in the idea of Yves Klein. He was using the photographs like he was using the sky, like he was using the colors, and in that sense it’s true. But let me, again — and I am sorry to be in [the sense?] the kind of, let us say, historical pointer. But do not forget that he did that in a kind of, let us say, competitive and (inaudible) spirit. Do not forget that that time was the beginning and the fascinating beginning of the space age, of the technological space age. It was the beginning of the space adventure. And Yves Klein, as a space man for other reasons, felt in competition with all the NASA and the Russian programs. He wanted also to make his leap into [23:00] space and to give another quality to this kind of images. And he wanted in his own way just to be competitive with all the mass media who were supporting the new space age. Do not forget that. That is so very important. And that’s the reason why he took those risks too.

GERALD SILK Peter? Go ahead.

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Yves Klein: Conquistador of the Void,” 1982

MALE Yeah, (inaudible) made a reference before to the Austrian tradition of jumping into the void, which I trust a lot of people in the audience recognize as a reference to the actual circumstances of (inaudible) death in, I believe, 1967, ’68. I believe. But I would like to emphasize that [as the demystification?] of the circumstances of his death, which did not come about due to self- mutilation. I would like now a demystification of the [24:00] circumstances of Yves Klein’s death at the age of 34. How did he die?

ARMAN He died of a heart attack.

NAN ROSENTHAL He died of a heart attack.

PIERRE RESTANY He died of an heart attack, but a very special one, because it was a serious (laughter) heart attack. He had something like 11 or 12 strokes, one after the other.

MALE (inaudible)

GERALD SILK A question there?

PIERRE RESTANY In a very short time, yeah.

GERALD SILK A question there?

FEMALE (inaudible) [simply?] that there [wasn’t towards?] another great artist who passed away [interested in flight?] was Leonardo da Vinci, a point which I’m sure we can also (inaudible).

PIERRE RESTANY We can go to Icarus too.

FEMALE The other thing is also that the photographs in a way seems to me leads up to a sensibility that’s very much like a point in early film history, [where?] people like (inaudible) and (inaudible) and early (inaudible), that kind of magical manipulation of [25:00] images that film (inaudible), [in a sense?] his photomontages (inaudible) those trips, it seems to me.

JULIAN SCHNABEL I just think also that it was something that he did. I mean, it was something that he was involved in doing, throwing his body around in a way, and I think he just took this activity that he was

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Yves Klein: Conquistador of the Void,” 1982 involved with and he did that and he used that because it was very personal involvement that he had anyway.

ARMAN Because it’s difficult. One other mistake would be to disconnect that activity from the all things. I think that it’s — you have to consider the all.

PIERRE RESTANY Well, listen...

GERALD SILK Let’s take another question.

FEMALE (inaudible) [a person to?] (inaudible) only to the fact that Yves Klein did this as a statement as (inaudible), why is there importance to it as whether it’s fraudulent or not?

NAN ROSENTHAL My point was that...

GERALD SILK Did everyone hear the question?

AUDIENCE No. [26:00]

GERALD SILK All right. Let me repeat it. If I can paraphrase it, it was “What is so important about whether the photograph is fraudulent or not?”

FEMALE [And I said?] (inaudible) owing to the fact that he [didn’t?] use it as a (inaudible).

GERALD SILK Yeah, owing to the fact that it is in fact a work of art, in some respects.

NAN ROSENTHAL If we go back to Vasari writing about Michelangelo and associating artistic creation with divine creation, what I’m saying here is that this is an example of — in Klein’s work — of calling attention to the possibility that that association doesn’t work too well anymore; that the idealist tradition in which the artist is a romantic hero maybe isn’t functioning at that point with enormous pressures to be vanguard, for example; that that tradition is frayed and that that work is a [27:00] symptom of the fraying of that tradition. I am not, as I say, calling Klein a fraud at all. I’m saying that he is showing you the possibility that he’s done something heroic and magical and amazing, and then he has undercut for you by exposing himself six weeks later, and by his text, “With or without a net, I ought to be able to fly.” He never says he [can?].

JULIAN SCHNABEL

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Yves Klein: Conquistador of the Void,” 1982

I don't think that was a big issue —

NAN ROSENTHAL Excuse me?

JULIAN SCHNABEL — actually.

NAN ROSENTHAL You don’t think...

JULIAN SCHNABEL No. I don't think that was a big issue in that particular piece.

ARMAN And I want also to point out something. And Pierre will remember very well. A lot of things that has been done by Yves were done in a kind of brainstorming with all the gang. Sometimes Iris Clert, Pierre, Robert J. Godet, Claude Pascal, Tinguely, [Paulo Cara?]. And everybody was suggesting, and there was a kind of [over-beating?] of ideas [28:00] and — OK, at the start, all the basic idea of Yves were Yves’s idea. But some things, like the publication of Dimanche, was the result of a brainstorming. Iris Clert was pushing for some PR, as it were, or some publication. And, well, he was [drown?] and he was pushing on the direction — on a very naïve way. Shrewd and naïve, both ways. But at the end, anyway, when it comes to his mission — he was looking at his work as his mission: to monochromy, to void — he was very serious. But all the paraphernalia around didn’t come to much at the end. It was something added by the brainstorming, by the environment, by this and by that.

PIERRE RESTANY [Well, I remember?] he asked me and he (inaudible) to ask me to (inaudible) any kind of series of [29:00] [things?]. When he had a new idea he asked me to give the (inaudible). Of course. I suggested anthropometries instead of prints and cosmogonies instead of, let us say, prints of the water, of the rain, nothing like that. But that was just a kind of (inaudible).

GERALD SILK Somebody wants to...

PIERRE RESTANY Yes, but let me finish about the leap, thinking about the leap. Well, (inaudible) that was a way of using us, you see. He used us — especially Arman, for example, or people like me, and some architects he work also close by for this architecture — he used all of those intimate friend of his as material, as human material, just as he used pigment and thing like that.

MALE Very...

PIERRE RESTANY We got used, and in a way we are glad to be used. That’s [all just what?] I’m saying, which is [quite?] (inaudible).

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Yves Klein: Conquistador of the Void,” 1982

GERALD SILK There’s a question there.

MALE I’d like to know more about his interest in contacting pure energy. Arman mentioned [30:00] his sensing of presences. Jumping into the void can be taken as a contact with energy. The void is certainly full of energy. The blue paintings had a type of retinal vibration, etc.

GERALD SILK Tom, would you want to talk — I don't want to put you on the spot, but your essay deals a lot with issues of the immaterial.

THOMAS MCEVILLEY Yeah, it may seem, on the face of it, contradictory to say the void is full of this or anything. But obviously the concept, as Klein related to the concept of the void, it was very close to the alchemical concept of prime matter. Clearly he related the IKB monos to that, and in that sense the photo of the leap or any other events of that type also kind of analogized the return of particulars down to the state of prime matter. And basically your question is hard to answer [31:00] except with a complete affirmation, that all of his art and his life seems to have circulated around the idea of a quest for pure energy.

GERALD SILK OK, we’re going to have to — I’m sorry — call this an afternoon.

(break in recording)

GERALD SILK ...you all. I appreciate the contribution of all the panelists, and glad you could all come. Thank you. (applause)

END OF AUDIO FILE 9009564_01_9009565_01-Yves-Klein-Conquistador-of-the-Void.mp3

Yves Klein: Conquistador of the Void, introduction by Susan Hirschfeld / Arman, Thomas McEvilley, Olivier Mosset, Joseph Kosuth, Pierre Restany, Nan Rosenthal, Julian Schnabel, moderated by Gerald Douglas Silk. 1982/11/21. Reel-to-Reel collection. A0004. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Archives, New York