Yves Klein

Ulf Norinder, Switzerland
Private Collection, Sweden (acquired from the above in 1979)
Sale: Sotheby's London, Contemporary Art Evening Auction, 25 June 2009, Lot 2
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Lausanne, Galerie Bonnier, Yves Klein, Le Monochrome: Empreintes, 1964, no. 13

Paul Wember, Yves Klein, Cologne 1969, p. 106, illustrated

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate although the blue is slightly brighter and more vibrant and the paper has slightly more golden yellow tones in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There are a few media losses in places to the left leg, and two to the bottom edge of the right leg, visible in the catalogue illustration; these losses are also visible in Paul Wember's 1969 book, 'Yves Klein', and are most probably original. The paper shows minor signs of ageing throughout and close inspection reveals a number of small, very faint and unobtrusive water marks at intervals across the sheet. There is a very minor, faint and unobtrusive diagonal rub mark towards the bottom left corner, and another towards the bottom right corner. There are some small areas of paper skinning towards the upper left edge, one small spot at the top right corner, another towards the bottom left corner and one very thin line at the centre of the bottom edge.
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Enshrining in an image that is simultaneously abstract and figurative, concrete and immaterial, Ant 59 beautifully surmises the themes that underpinned one of the most important events in the evolution of conceptual art.  On the 9^th March 1960 at the Galerie d'Art Contemporain in the Rue Saint-Honoré in Paris, Klein presided over a now legendary one night action spectacle in which the artist breathed new life into the avant-garde and introduced an entirely new art form. In front of a select crowd of critics and gallery patrons, the artist – dressed in a tuxedo and adorned with the Maltese Cross of his Saint Sebastian brotherhood – orchestrated his pigment-smeared models to create imprints against the paper-lined walls and dynamic movement paintings as they dragged one another along the floor, also lined with paper. Conducted with ritual and formality, the occasion had a conspicuous air of theatricality entirely consonant with Klein's assiduous promotion of his art and the Blue Revolution. In the background, three violinists, three cellists and three choristers played the Monotone Symphony, twenty minutes of imperturbable one-note music followed by twenty minutes of silence. Minimal and austere, the Monotone Symphony bore witness to the promotion of the role of chance and silence in the musical 'Happenings' of John Cage, while the performance itself elevated the painting process itself to a grand theatrical idea that dramatically presages the evolution of performance art and forced the critical reorientation that took place in the latter half of the Twentieth Century.

The Anthropométries – a term coined by Klein's friend the critic Pierre Restany – signalled the confluence of several divergent ideas and a new point of departure for the artist who had not previously drawn attention to the human body in his art. The seminal idea derived from a dinner party, hosted by Robert Giodet at his apartment on the Ile Saint-Louis in June 1958, in which Klein orchestrated an informal performance in which a nude model smeared in blue pigment sprawled herself across a canvas.  In his Anthropométries, Klein manifests the conception that is central to Judo, a practise that was of great interest to the artist, that the body is a centre of physical, sensorial and spiritual energy. The profound conceptual premise of the series is that flesh confers to the work the phenomenological presence of the body. Conceiving of the body as a force of creativity, a marking apparatus that is itself a sign and signifier of life, Klein transforms the human body – the erstwhile passive subject of traditional figurative art – into the agent of artistic creativity. In so doing, Klein positions himself, the artist, in the role of director/producer, a catalyst in this creative act, set at a distance from the work itself. Klein had previously sought to distance himself from his creative output, effacing the personalised artist's touch by using a roller instead of a brush to apply the paint to his Monochromes in a uniform layer. In the present work, Klein's ongoing investigation into authority, authenticity and originality in art reaches its apogee: "That was, finally, the solution to the problems of distance in painting: my brushes were alive and remote-controlled" (the artist cited in: Exhibition Catalogue, Ostfildern-Ruit, Yves Klein, 2004, p. 126).

The apparent spontaneity and energy present in Ant 59 translates into one of the most abstract representations from this celebrated series.  As if an explosion of fireworks, the various gradations of Klein's signature International Klein Blue are scattered across the composition making this one of the most expressive and unique works.  Much like the Abstract Expressionist movement which took America by storm post World War II, Klein would bring these ground-breaking new ideas across the Atlantic in his own unique rendition, which is exhibited brilliantly in the present work.  The culmination of numerous and varied thematic strands of Yves Klein's conceptually innovative and materially revolutionary oeuvre, Ant 59 propounds the marriage of spiritual notions of immateriality with the heady and sensual world of the corporeal in a masterpiece of unmitigated beauty.