Among the art-savvy, the name Yves Klein inevitably calls to mind a vision of blue. Not just any blue, but an ultramarine hue so rich, deep and powdery that it has an unworldly cast. He called it International Klein Blue (IKB) and branded it with his outsized personality, visionary ambition and impish charm.
The color will always carry an echo of its master, who unexpectedly flamed out more than a half-century ago.
Klein was just 34 when he died in 1962. His career spanned just eight years. In France -- his homeland -- he was a celebrity. But his moment has been slow to arrive in the United States. Walker Art Center and the Hirshhorn Museum took up the torch this year with a show that opens Saturday in Minneapolis after debuting this summer in Washington, D.C. "Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers" runs through Feb. 13 at the Walker.
Besides his mesmerizing blue paintings and sculptures, "Yves Klein" features textured relief-paintings that look like slabs of lunar landscapes; nude-body-prints made by performers at the artist's direction; paintings marked by the elements -- wind, rain, smoke and flame; sketches, correspondence and photos documenting his fanciful performances. The latter include the infamous "Leap Into the Void," a black-and-white 1960 photo in which Klein appears to be soaring from a building in a surely doomed effort to fly. In that pre-Photoshop era, the "Leap" picture was a sensation.
"The work is hard to pigeonhole," said Kerry Brougher, the Hirshhorn's deputy director, who co-curated the show with Philippe Vergne, a former Walker curator who now heads the Dia Art Foundation in New York. "He was taking painting in a new direction, a kind of futurist, utopian direction that came out of the existential dilemma after World War II."
Though raised as a Catholic, Klein fell under the spell of Rosicrucianism and blended its ideas about the importance of space and spirituality with zen concepts picked up in Japan. Klein never painted conventionally but used rollers, palette knives and most notoriously "living brushes." Instead of depicting female nudes, he directed women covered in blue paint to press their nude bodies against bare canvas.
In the end he may have been done in by his utopian convictions and his naivete. Three Italian filmmakers asked to record one of his painting-performances with the nude women. He agreed, believing that the publicity would further his "blue revolution." Instead, their film, "Mondo Cane," was a kind of international freak show.
Klein attended the film's premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May 1962 and was horrified by its treatment of his work. That evening he had his first heart attack. Three days later he had a second attack, and he died three weeks later of a third. Popular legend blames the film for his premature death.
