Lhen, on March 9, 1960, a handful of journalists and the elite of the art world met at the International Gallery of Contemporary Art in Paris, they were far from imagining the performance that Yves Klein had in store for them. The latter, who is already nicknamed “Yves the Monochrome”, has been preparing this coup for several months now. Led by the artist, who acts like a conductor, three naked women present themselves in front of the crowd, before coating themselves with paint (the famous Klein blue) then pressing their bodies onto canvases, leaving their mark there. .
A stroke of genius for some, a scandal for others, this happening in any case gave birth to the most famous works of the French painter, the Anthropometries. The very ones that the British designer Phoebe Philo, then artistic director of the Céline house, will affix in all-over on white dresses during her spring-summer 2017 show.
Two months after his feat, on May 19, 1960, it was under the name International Klein Blue (IKB) that the artist registered his blue at the National Institute of Industrial Property. Since French law provides that no one can appropriate a shade, Yves Klein and Edouard Adam, his color merchant, circumvent the ban by explaining that the term “Blue” here does not designate a shade, but a product.
Ultramarine, cobalt, Majorelle…
But what could he find in him? “The blue n‘has no dimensions, explained Yves Klein in 1959 during a conference at the Sorbonne. It is out of dimension, while the other colors have one. » For the painter, this color is also that of the imagination, in addition to having a sacred dimension.
Yves Klein was not mistaken: blue has been, since the dawn of time, a symbol of spirituality. Mesopotamians and Egyptians even made lapis lazuli the stone of the gods. And, if the Western world for a very long time shunned blue, preferring colors then considered more dignified, such as white, black or red, it made an about-face in the Middle Ages. The theologians of the time then agreed to establish that divine light is blue, unlike earthly light, which is white. In religious imagery, the Virgin Mary thus takes on bluish hues, when she is not directly dressed in said hue.
Reassuring, sacred and historically fascinating, Klein blue is on all the catwalks this season (Givenchy, Giorgio Armani, Burberry, Acne Studios, etc.). And is also available in equally stimulating shades, from ultramarine to cobalt through Majorelle, heating blue or royal blue.
