At Walker yesterday, Yves Klein exhibition next in main temporary exhibition galleries 4,5,and 6 in Barnes Tower.
Stay tuned for reports on IKB and other related topics. As to the void it's always there always available the void is the one thing you need to get it on with the metaphysical nonsense called supposing as in supposing all art was merely entertainment a sort of easy pleasure all one needs is eyes. Klein by all reports was possessed by some pretty unusual ideas, about art and about the very enterprise we named art. Are his practices less extreme now in our late-modern age? We don't paint with women now but people tattoo themselves into grapphiti like gibberish, body art is very common. As to Klein's attempt to fly we see less of that and instead more crashing to earth. As to the blue monochromes ah not nearly as gnarly as scratchie and oh so blue beyond blue like a blue forever.
I remember in art school thinking if I was only a few years older I would have been a late arriving abstract expressionist painter. Easier than pop art where you had to be neat and inside the lines but still it was all that post war stuff the man thing the he man thing - now we have to do something really good and what we got was abstract expressionism which put the U.S.A. on the international art map. But the support system for this new experimental style was not up to the task of promotion and analysis. Even now who knows what has aesthetic value and that this valuable can ebb and flow like any commodity. Yves Klein is a bit of an enigma maybe it's the language difference with we English speakers ? But also the French turn of mind most especially for French from the South from Nice. The region is frankly a paradise. And when you are born in such a beautiful place perhaps your art will take a different form. It's the warm sea the sponges the blue Mediterranean on the coast where dreams often call to us. But we'll see the show at the Guggenheim in 1984 was interesting seems like it's time to reignite this art not just exhibit it.