Yves Klein's Blue Monochrome (1961)
This piece is an approximately 6'x5' canvas upon which one shade of paint has been evenly laid. The paint used in this piece was an original hue developed by Klein and some chemists, which he named International Klein Blue.
To me, Yves Klein's Blue Monochrome exemplifies a key value of contemporary art.
I think that one credo of effective contemporary art is:
Art should be a process by which an artist reveals a medium, rather than one by which a medium expresses an artist.
Klein allows the medium--paint in this case-- to exist in its purest, most fully exhibitionistic state, without the dilution of line, form, and concept. Rather than obscuring the material he worked with by hijacking it for representational purposes, Klein's efforts have actually preserved or reinstated the material's authenticity. Klien further exhalted the Medium by focusing on the development of a new paint, a new medium, which further shifts the focus onto the inherent centrality of the medium.
For very long, art has been focused on the unreal-- art was the depiction of fictional narratives, dreamscapes and concepts through the subjugation of the real (the medium). Contemporary art offers a counterpoint to this anthropomorphizing and fictionalizing process by affording the real (the medium) a place of recognition it has been denied. In doing so, it vitalizes the art world by bringing a sobering and exhileratingly concrete relevance to the dialogue.
I think that this point is well-executed by Klein in this piece.
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