These are some pics from Kline pieces I saw back in 1999 in some of my travels. What a shame to take pictures of art in black and white. In person these figures are Kline blue. The color is so vivid you can taste it.
History of Empty Art Shows:
The mother of them all, this show became an overnight legend, essentially due to Klein’s masterly manipulation of communications and publicity, very much in the spirit of Dada antics 30 years before. This exhibition was above all an event, with an elaborate opening staged on the evening of Klein’s 30th birthday. Over 3,000 invitations were sent out — with illegal stamps in Klein’s trademark blue — while the uninvited were expected to pay an entrance fee of 1,500 francs. On arriving at the gallery — located, fittingly, on the Rue des Beaux-Arts — visitors found its windows had been “blued out” (again in Klein’s trademark color) so that the interior could not be seen from outside, and the usual entrance was closed in favor of a more circuitous route via a side door. There gallerygoers were met by two Republican Guards in full uniform and offered a cocktail: gin and Cointreau colored with methylene blue. They were then ushered into the gallery space in small groups. And what did they find once inside? A room freshly painted white, with a gray carpet on the floor and a white curtain that both dissimulated and drew attention to the service door. And nothing else. Meanwhile, outside, the waiting crowd rapidly swelled, and by 10 p.m., a near riot of several thousand had to be dispersed by the police and the fire brigade.
He even has his own color IKB, International Kline Blue. Pretty awesome.
No comments:
Post a Comment