Monochrome Bleu

In a masterful gesture of showmanship, Yves Klein had the blue color he used in his paintings, whose binding agent he had developed with a pharmacist, patented as IKB, International Klein Blue. He thereby legally protected his intellectual property—quite uncommon in art—and declared this distinctive blue color his official trademark. The painter’s hand remains invisible in the monochromes of Klein’s blue period, in a way not dissimilar to the production of industrial goods. No brushstroke disturbs the pasty even blue surface of the paintings, which may differ in size but not in color and texture. This renunciation of all traces of artistic individuality, however, is itself renounced by Klein’s use of his own trademark paint that declares his work an authentic Yves Klein. Klein said: “Color inhabits space, whereas a line merely travels through and cuts through space. The line touches the indefinite. Color is. Color allows me completely to identify with space. I am truly free.” In its immaterial quality, color promotes the mutual deconstruction of the boundaries between painting and beholder. The painting opens up a limited and specific space into an endless space. Yves Klein also enabled buyers to participate in the absolute by printing special checks and selling them in exchange for clearly defined quantities of gold that he would then then throw into the Seine - in an artistic gesture he called the stabilization of sensibility in space.would then throw ugh. No longer is it art alone, but also the reception of art that attains commercial character.