Yves Klein's “Blue Revolution” Comes to Blenheim Palace

July 27, 2018

As we continue to seek out exceptional instances of light and color to share alongside our SUMMER LIGHTS programming, we were thrilled to have the opportunity to visit a groundbreaking display of work by Lévy Gorvy artist Yves Klein at Blenheim Palace. Currently on view, the exhibition is the largest ever solo presentation of the artist’s work in the United Kingdom. We hope you will have the opportunity to visit this stunning event in person.

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In the bucolic landscape outside the small city of Oxford, the sumptuous reds, greens, and golds of the English Baroque-style Blenheim Palace have been gleefully splashed with International Klein Blue. The iconic shade of ultramarine patented by the French visionary artist, it is a color so central to his aesthetic and spiritual beliefs that Klein described his use of the pigment as a “Blue Revolution.”[1]

Designed by John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoor, Blenheim Palace was built over a 17-year period by Queen Anne as a gift to John Churchill, 1^st Duke of Marlborough, in thanks for the Duke’s victory at the Battle of Blenheim on August 13, 1704. Yves Klein Contemporary Art Exhibition, curated by Michael Frahm, is the latest in the Blenheim Art Foundation’s series of contemporary art programming, which has included exhibitions by Ai Weiwei and Jenny Holzer, among others. Klein was tragically young when he died of a heart attack at the age of 34, and the exhibition notes that 2018 would have marked the artist’s 90^th birthday, describing him as “an innovator with a short yet meteoric career that left an indelible mark on the history of painting, sculpture, and performance.”[2]

Klein’s artistic development was shaped by two seemingly disparate areas of interest that were both rooted in spirituality. Judo, a martial art based on the premise of harnessing the energy of cosmic forces and placing them in balance, had a strong impact on the artist who spent a year in Japan earning a black belt. Klein was also deeply interested in Rosicrucianism, a theological doctrine centered around the belief that ancient civilizations had discovered esoteric truths with insights into nature, the physical universe and the spiritual realm. Through his art, Klein continued his spiritual quest and advanced his own ideas, such as his belief that monochrome artworks had the potential to “make visible the absolute.”[3] Many of these monochrome works were made in the three colors the artist considered to have sacred properties: rose, which represented the physical world; gold, which could be used as a portal to the absolute; and blue, which captured immateriality and the infinite. For the artist, International Klein Blue was the perfect expression of these elusive states.

Comprising over 50 artworks installed throughout the palace’s Great Hall, state rooms, and library, the exhibition contrasts modern art with monumental estate to spellbinding effect, creating a rich aesthetic dialogue that invites fresh contemplation of each. Klein’s Pigment pur bleu (1957/2018) [above] opens the exhibition, installed on the floor at the center of the Great Hall. Surrounded by Roman arches and marble statuary, the rich carpet of loose pigment is, in this context, evocative of a Roman villa’s impluvium—a recession in the floor of the villa’s atrium for catching rainwater. It is fitting then, that adjacent to this hang the works Pluie bleue (1957) and Pluie rouge (1961) [below], described together as “a poetic evocation of pouring rain out of blue and red rods hanging from the ceiling, bringing the outside world indoors.”[4] With light streaming into the hall from windows high above, the long lines of pigment beautifully echo the fluted shafts of the Corinthian columns that frame these two works.

The opulent surroundings of the palace accentuate the mystic aspect of Klein’s art, lending many of the works on view the gravitas associated with devotional objects of the sort one finds in a church or temple. Some of these sculptures were made as small-scale replicas of artworks or objects housed in Parisian museums, and the objects Klein chose include pieces originally made for religious purposes. Blue Venus (1962) [below, top left] is based off the form of the statue Venus of Alexandria [below, top right]. Klein’s Victoire de Samothrace (1962) [below, bottom left] is derived from the Hellenistic statue of Nike of the same name [below, bottom right]. The installation of these works in a stately home is particularly striking because the forms are recognizably consistent with the type of object one would expect to find in this context, yet the effervescent blue pigment Klein has applied to their surfaces is completely incongruous with the surroundings. In this way, the works then appear both familiar and unfamiliar; contextually appropriate in form, but outlandish in their color. The exhibition notes that Klein’s application of International Klein Blue to objects from the world around him, such as globes and statues, was a campaign to create another world, “building up a repository of ultramarine objects to gradually create a blue universe.”[5] This was Klein’s “Blue Revolution.”

One of the most pronounced contrasts is housed in the Red Drawing Room, where Klein’s “Anthropometry” painting, Jonathan Swift (1960) [below], hangs. Made by models covered in International Klein Blue paint who, guided by Klein, imprinted their bodies directly onto the canvas, this abstract and boldly gestural painting hangs amongst a suite of classical portraits, including one by Sir Anthony Van Dyck. Though certainly an outlier, it looks magnificent—the tangle of blue marks playing off the tidy repetition of the floral-patterned red damask wall covering. In a phenomenon reminiscent of Klein’s efforts to balance cosmic forces through the art of judo, the appearance of the room, so mannered and orderly, is greatly improved by the introduction of a little chaos.

In the Long Library, two of Klein’s “Relief Portraits” are installed on either side of a marble statue of the palace’s original benefactor, Queen Anne. Detailed bronze casts of Klein’s friends and artistic collaborators Arman and Claude Pascal, these nudes are coated in International Klein Blue pigment and mounted against monochrome panels gilded with gold leaf that gleam in the natural light. The exhibition describes how Klein’s body casts represent both “the carnal and the spiritual”[6], a concept that seems to echo the status of the white stone queen they flank, the statue representing a figure who many believed received her authority from God.

So thoughtfully installed in this unusual setting, Yves Klein Contemporary Art Exhibition provides numerous opportunities to admire the artist’s work in a new light, and to appreciate more deeply the force of his oeuvre. The exhibition also brings a liveliness and vitality to the baroque palace, supporting a greater admiration for this UNESCO World Heritage Site, and reminding us that at the heart of so many exquisite works of art and architecture, there lies a spirit of revolution.

Yves Klein Contemporary Art Exhibition is on view through October 7, 2018.

This text was organized in the spirit of our SUMMER LIGHTS programming, which includes
“Neon in Daylight: François Morellet“ on view in New York through August 17
“Depth Perception: James Turrell” on view in New York through August 17 and
 “Johannes Girardoni: Sensing Singularity“ on view in London through September 15.

[1],[2],[4],[5],[6]Yves Klein Contemporary Art Exhibition. Curated by Michael Frahm. Woodstock, England: Blenheim Palace, 2018. Text presented in conjunction with an exhibition of the same title, organized by the Blenheim Art Foundation and presented at Blenheim Palace, July 18—October 7, 2018.

[3]”Biography,” website of Yves Klein, www.yvesklein.com/en/biographie.