Tosh Talks: Yves Klein Japan

Yves Klein: Japan

 

"Yves Klein: Japan

Text by Terhi Génévrier-Tausti, Denys Riout. (DILECTA)

I love this book because it deals with my two favorite subject matters: Yves Klein and Japan. In a manner, it's the same subject matter.  The book focuses on Klein's trip to Japan to study Judo, a passion of his, even before doing art. Both of his parents were painters, and, interestingly, he marks himself in a different interest. Eventually, he does focus on art, but his passion for leaving France to another world is a curiosity that an artist usually shares. Once he reaches Japan, he is concerned about organizing an exhibition for his parent's artwork and focusing on his Judo studies. 

The heart of "Yves Klein Japan" is that it's a scrapbook of his time in Tokyo and other cities. Told in a chronicle order of time in relying on the people he met and Japan's sights. He arrived in 1952 and stayed in the country for 15 months. There are photographs of travel documents, souvenirs he purchased, handwritten letters to his parents, the French Government to secure a visa in Japan, as well as correspondence and art he made for friends on postcards. To travel to Japan in the 1950s after the war was made only by the few, and it must have been a strange world to visit. Like all first-time visitors to Tokyo, one is struck by the neon lights at dusk and night, and to this day, it's exactly the same landscape.  

Klein also visited the island of Oshima, which is a few hours away from Tokyo. I stayed on this island for three-weeks, during an art festival. There is very little information in English about this island, which has an active volcano. Klein comments to a friend on a postcard how surreal the landscape is around the volcano area. This is the cliche statement to make when one visits such a place, but it is also 100% true. The starkness of the area around the volcano is colorless in a sense but very livid in its black and gray rocks that surround the area. It's the opposite of Klein's later work and his interest in colors. I feel such foreign earth must have made an impression on his aesthetic in later years. It's very much the opposite of his art, but there is a similar texture and heat issue. Klein looked at colors and fire as a spiritual aspect of life. Although this is more of natural science, it does convey a brutal spirituality in itself. 

Judo is a sculpture in action. It is also a ritual art with rules and boundaries. Klein's work was also in the same mode when he did his performances and even the music he wrote for his first symphony, where it's one-note for 20 minutes and then silent for the next 20. The ritual in his work, I think, came from his visit to and study of Japanese culture—specifically Judo, of course. 

I'm such a Japanophile that I love to hear Westerners' first approach and visit to Japan. "Yves Klein Japan" hits that spot for me, as well as his personal observations of the cities and countryside of this part of Asia. One's culture or work is never an island in itself. It feeds from travel, thinking, and practice. Klein was a great artist and whose work is pretty magnificent. I don't think his contemporary art presence would have been the same if not for this trip to Japan. So, the physical objects are his art and this book, as well as Klein's instructional book Les fondements du Judo. "Yves Klein Japan" is an enchanting book.  

"Art & Vinyl" by Antoine de Beaupré (Fraenkel Gallery/Editions Antoine de Beaupré)

ISBN: 9782912794291 

FRAENKEL GALLERY / EDITIONS ANTOINE DE BEAUPRÉ

Of all objects on this planet, the vinyl record and its packaging is probably the one thing that I treasure the most. The size of a 12" or even a 7" piece of vinyl strikes me as the perfect size to appreciate the work that is in front of me. Some people have pictures of their family or pets on their I-Phones, and some even have food, but for me, it's the picture of a favorite album that warms my heart. That one image brings me to a different world or a landscape that is redefined to another level of existence. I go to record stores, not only to buy music but also to look at the album covers. I very much treat a visit to a record store as if one visits a museum or gallery. It's interesting to know that many artists feel the same way, regarding the vinyl album and its cover.

"Art & Vinyl" (FRAENKEL GALLERY / EDITIONS ANTOINE DE BEAUPRÉ) is edited by Jeffrey Fraenkel and Antoine de Beaupré, whose records are in his collection that is in this book. He is also the founder of Librarie Galerie 213 in Paris. There are many books on the vinyl record as music and as a visual, but "Art & Vinyl" is the best volume on that subject matter. For one, this expensive book is superbly designed, and the reproductions of album covers and their vinyl is perfection at work. 

The focus is on the fine arts and not the commercial arts. All the covers and designs in this book are by well-known artists and photographers. And there are surprises here. I didn't know for instance that Gerhard Richter did a painting on a Glenn Gould album. Or that Yves Klein designed the album and label for a recording of a lecture he gave at a museum. Beyond that, there are the famous works, for instance, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band,"(Peter Blake & Jann Haworth), "Best of Cream" (Jim Dine), "Exile on Main Street" (Robert Frank), and others. 

There are also artists who did covers, but also made the recordings as well. Joseph Beuys, Yves Klein, Jean Dubuffet, Christian Marclay and Wolfgang Tillmans all made their records under their name. Noticing the relationship between the visual and recording arts is interesting. Many musicians do visual art, so why not are artists making music? In a sense it's another platform for these talented people to explore, and "Art & Vinyl" covers that field quite well. Not only a remarkable book, but an essential book for designers, but also to expose the thread between high-end artists and the vinyl graphic and recording world.

September 5, 2014

September 5, 2014

It is hard work to do nothing.  I’m always filling my day with things to do, to avoid the nothing.   Once I wake up in the morning, there are the few minutes of dread where nothing is happening.  I’m trying to set my mind on what the day will be like.  I check my calendar, and like a lot of people, I’m obsessed with making lists. If I have less than five things to do that day, I feel depressed.  Then slowly the feeling of guilt that you should be producing something, even if it’s not important.  I open up my computer and look at the blank screen.  Nothing is happening.  I then look out my front window, facing Waverly Drive, and I see no one. Usually there are people walking their dogs at this time in the morning, but alas, I see only a fat furry cat walking down the sidewalk by he or her self.  A dog when is either on a leash or free from it, always walks without a purpose or direction.  A cat walks going to a specific direction in mind, and is rarely side-tracked by anything, unless someone approaches it.  There is one moment which becomes tense, when I see the cat walk behind a parked car, and I wonder if I will see it again exiting that car.  The moment I see the cat again, I feel a sense of relief.  He or she then enters into an opening of the bush, and disappears.

For me, there is no feeling of the cat being cute, or beautiful.  I simply like to see it walking down the sidewalk with a sense of purpose or plan.  This actually inspires me to get back to my writing.  There is a piece of music that causes me a great deal of anxiety and it’s John Cage’s “4’33.” It has a strict format where the piano player sits behind his keyboard and doesn’t play anything for the duration of four minutes and thirty-three seconds.   People think this is a work of silence, but in fact it is totally the opposite of silence.  When you are in a concert hall or theater “hearing” this piece, you are immediately aware of the sounds around you - perhaps a nervous cough, a clearing of the throat, a fart, or the fear of making a farting noise, air conditioner, heating vent, shuffling of feet, and so forth.

When I write I need consistent sound around me.  Either music or outside ambient sounds, for instance traffic noise, as well as a child screaming down the block from me.  Each sound is like someone hitting me with an live electric wire, which gets my brain to jump. I work in a lonely place, which is pretty much my head.  This is no longer a bad thing at all.  To actually feel the space between yours truly and the world is an area that I can measure and fill up images with, but I also can subtract imagery as well.  The thing is you just have to control the noise around you, and something like “4’33” is actually chaos. Because you can’t really control the noise level or silence in one’s life.  So setting everything aside, you sit there for “4’33” in quietness that is impossible, and also the anxiety or blissfulness knowing that things will happen again at 4 minutes and thirty-four seconds.  It has a beginning and an end.

It’s very work-orientated.  We usually have 8 hours a day to work.  Within those 8 hours, we have two fifteen minutes breaks, and usually an half-n-hour lunch.  Or it could be an hour lunch.  Nevertheless this sets a schedule for the entire day that one can’t really question or get out of, unless you call in sick.  Or like me, unemployed.  When you don’t have a job, you’re facing a series of moments that cannot be filled.  So one is left with the anxiety of confronting ‘nothing.' Drinking is a very simple way of dealing with the sense of time wasting away.  Because at least you are taking something that sort of comments on time passing, and you reflect on the failure or happiness of those moments.

I’m trying to do away with my vices, so I just focus on being on the entrance to nothing.  I want to face that void, and be contented with the blankness that will come upon me.  That, hasn’t happened yet. I remember seeing a performance by Yves Klein called “Monotone-Silence Symphony” in New York, and what the piece consists of is an orchestra of 70 musicians and singers performing a D major chord for 20 minutes, followed by 20 minutes of silence.  The members of the orchestra are instructed not to move and just sit on their seats.  It’s a tougher piece than “4’33” because we know that the silence will last exactly 20 minutes. So one is getting around 16 minutes of more silence.  But we do get the contrast between sound and silence in this work.  I have met someone who went to one of the performances and felt that the work failed, because the silence part was not done properly.

Daniel Moquay, who is in charge of the Yves Klein archive and estate was quoted regarding a performance of the piece that took place in a Parisian church:  ““The door of the church was open, and a pigeon came in and sat where everyone could see him,” he said. “During the 20-minute silence, he did not move at all. It was kind of incredible. And then when the silence was over, he left. ”

April 28, 2014

April 28, 2014

I know I’m being naive, but to see such horror in such a horrifying context is …. Horrible.   As a meditation, there are those who turn away from horror thoughts, but I choose to go into the pool of such imagery, to attempt to make it not as worthy or to remove its importance to my life. Benito Mussollni’s death, at the hands of his fellow citizens is a series of images that are hard for me to erase in my mind.   In 1945, him and his mistress Clara Petacci, were shot to death in Mezzegra, and then taken to Milan, where their bodies were hung upside down in front of a gas station.  The crowd there vented their frustration and rage, and it is shocking to see Mussollni’s body like it was slaughtered meat at a butcher’s shop.  The execution of Saddam Hussein now comes to mind as well.  Is it justice, or is it the brutality of our times being expressed over and over again?

The dialogue between Saddam and his executioner is almost like a Noel Coward comedy, except within minutes we see the body of Saddam with a broken neck, dead, dangling far from the ground.  The cell phone footage makes the death even more obscene.  I’m so disgusted with images such as these, yet, I feel obliged to watch them, and watch them again.  I feel if I watched them once, it will remain in my mind forever. The shocking aspect of seeing dead bodies, especially being placed in a historical context, makes it even more nauseating to me.   The pornography of violence, whatever it is at a NRA convention or on YouTube is extremely disturbing.  I think what I find depressing is the fact that we accept violence as an everyday occurrence, and in the sense it is part of our lives.  Even though I’m quick to condemn it, I am drawn to the images of destruction, specifically the smashed-in face of Mussollni and Saddam’s image of death in the hands of a crowd that knew the narration and how it will take place in front of the cameras as well in their hearts.  The only piece of art that comes to mind, that expresses the horror is Scott Walker’s song from “The Drift” called “Clara.” Here you can hear the aural sounds of the execution and the beatings of Mussollni and Clara.  It’s a gorgeous piece of music.  Jarring, yet a meditation on evil and the brutality that seem to be married forever in our way that we look at the world.

On the other hand, as like throwing dice against a wall, I appreciate the numbers in my favor coming up, and therefore I like to bath myself in the imagery of Yves Klein, who conveys a certain amount of magic or a blissful state for me.  I can easily focus on that world as well.  When I see his blue paintings or sculptures it is a perfect world to me.   I don’t think of hate, anger, just the pure color of blue penetrating my soul into a euphoric state of consciousness. Klein also did a musical piece called “Monotone” Symphony.  It is a symphony that consists of one note and it is performed by a 10 piece orchestra.   The piece consists of two parts.  The first 20 minutes is the one note being performed, and then the second part is exactly 20 minutes of silence.

If I can somehow take all the ugly obscene images that're inside my head and transform it into a world of Yves Klein, that would be my ideal life.   That, and some Jacques Dutronc music, of course.

Tosh Talks Dec.07.2010

"Tosh Talks" on Yves Klein and Morrissey

Blue Women Art - Yves Klein (1962)

"Yves the Provocateur: Yves Klein and Twentieth-Century Art"

Yves the Provocateur: Yves Klein and Twentieth-Century Art by Thomas McEvilley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Remarkable biography (with some analysis of his work) on the artist Yves Klein.  A man who knew no bounds or restrictions.  A dandy as much as a black-belt Judo fanatic.  A man who jumped from a second or was it a third floor without fear.  A spoiled brat with great talent.  A man who had a temper problem which he tried to contain, and probably caused him his fatal heart problems.   Nevertheless I am always attracted to artists who have an amazing ego.  Does that affect their work?  Yes, but Klein was a different type of animal.  Totally on the go and extremely restless he had to explore the 'void' knowing that there is no end or maybe beginning.  This is not a large book, but an important and very much a readable study on this great French figure of the arts.

Yves Klein you rule!


View all my reviews

Yves Klein's "The Foundations of Judo"