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Lot Essay
'The brain is wider than the sky
For put them side by side
The one the other will contain
With ease and you beside
The brain is deeper than the sea
For hold them blue to blue
The one the other will absorb
As sponges buckets do
The brain is just the weight of God
For heft them pound for pound
And they will differ if they do
As syllable from sound'
EMILY DICKINSON, ‘THE BRAIN IS WIDER THAN THE SKY’, 1862
‘Blue has no dimensions. All colors bring forth associations of concrete, material, and tangible ideas, while blue evokes all the more the sea and the sky, which are what is most abstract in tangible and visible nature’
YVES KLEIN
‘While working on my paintings in my studio I sometimes used sponges. Evidently, they very quickly turned blue! One day I perceived the beauty of blue in the sponge, this working tool all of a sudden became a primary medium for me’
YVES KLEIN
Rare for its extraordinarily intimate scale, the present work stands among the very smallest examples of Yves Klein’s groundbreaking Sculpture-Eponges (Sponge- Sculptures). Executed in 1961, the work was originally owned by Paul Wember – author of Klein’s catalogue raisonné – who acquired it directly from the artist. Saturated with the unearthly beauty of his signature pigment – ‘International Klein Blue’, or IKB – the Sculpture-Eponges encapsulate his enduring quest to reveal the immaterial void at the heart of all existence. For Klein, the sponge – an ancient ocean-dwelling creature – was physically indicative of the wonder and mystery of nature. When impregnated with the pure, deep intensity of IKB, it came to symbolise the mind’s ability to absorb and perceive the unknown dimensions of reality. Evolving from his series of blue monochromes, the Sculpture- Eponges were conceived as portraits of Klein’s viewers, visually representing the all-encompassing and transcendent effect of IKB upon the brain. The unique shade of blue, engineered to maximum brilliance, was construed as a living entity that had the power to transport the onlooker beyond the earthbound realm. The sponge, with its powers of absorption and retention, embodied man’s capacity to sense and internalise the vast spiritual domain that lay beyond human consciousness. With its rich natural topography of ridges and craters, the present work quivers under the incidences of light, soaking up pigment with no trace of the artist’s input. Blossoming organically from its base like a delicate flower, it offers a material vision of the immaterial, placing the viewer in direct communion with the raw, mystical essence of IKB.
Though influenced by the developments of the Space Age, Klein’s philosophies were ultimately rooted in alchemical notions that had fascinated him since boyhood. His quest for a transcendental pigment began in 1947: sitting on a rocky beach in Nice beside his friends Arman and Claude Pascal, he declared ‘the blue sky is my first artwork’ (Y. Klein, quoted by Arman in T. McEvilley, ‘Yves Klein: Conquistador of the Void’, in Yves Klein 1928- 1962: A Retrospective, exh. cat., Institute for the Arts, Rice University, Houston, 1982, p. 46). Having grown up surrounded by the deep azure of the Mediterranean, Klein considered blue to be the most immaterial of all shades: a boundless, dimensionless hue, born of the infinite territories of sea and sky – the colour of Giotto Bondone’s celestial frescoes in the Basilica of San Francesco d’Assisi. While working on his early series of IKB monochromes, Klein made a serendipitous discovery. Seeking a uniform texture for his newly-developed ultramarine tone, he often used sponges to apply the pigment. ‘Evidently, they very quickly turned blue!’, he explained. ‘One day I perceived the beauty of blue in the sponge; this working tool all of a sudden became a primary medium for me. The sponge has that extraordinary capacity to absorb and become impregnated with whatever fluid, which was naturally very seductive to me. Thanks to the natural and living nature of sponges, I was able to make portraits to the readers of my monochromes, which, after having seen and travelled into the blue of my paintings, returned from them completely impregnated with sensibility, just as the sponges’ (Y. Klein, in Overcoming the Problematics of Art: The Writings of Yves Klein, New York 2007, p. 22). Klein originally began attaching sponges to his monochromes, before relinquishing the canvas completely in favour of free-standing sculpture. The sponge, once painted with IKB, was coated in a highly volatile fixative that caused the colour to ‘hover’ illusively over the surface.
In 1959, Klein mounted a pioneering exhibition at Galerie Iris Clert, displaying a veritable forest of sponge sculptures and reliefs alongside his monochrome paintings. Titled Bas-reliefs dans une forêt d’éponges, the installation presented an immersive, otherworldly environment: a natural landscape infused with the mysteries of the void. The following year, Klein registered the formula for IKB at the Institut national de la propriété industrielle, believing he had arrived at the colour in its purest form. Unlike gold and ‘madder rose’ – the two other components of his holy chromatic trilogy – IKB was able to absorb all visible light rays except the deepest blue, thereby endowing the sponge with a sense of both dense solidity and fathomless void. As Kerry Brougher explains, ‘In effect, the sponges reversed the flow of the monochromes … the zero degree of Klein’s blue monochromes gave way to an absorption into this world of the “other side”, a way of demonstrating the immaterial in something material, a means of bringing the invisible spiritual realm into the dominion of flesh’ (K. Brougher, ‘Involuntary Painting’, in Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers, exh. cat., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D. C., 2010, p. 34). The infinite, cosmic space of the monochrome was drawn into physical reality through the sponge – just as the human brain had the power to register the immaterial. The properties of IKB would be further explored in Klein’s series of Reliefs planétaires, as well as his Anthropométries, in which living human bodies became vessels for his patented pigment. In the refined dimensions of the present work, we witness Klein’s so-called ‘Blue Revolution’ at its most concentrated: a vision of base, earthbound substance imbued with the essence of a higher dimension.
For put them side by side
The one the other will contain
With ease and you beside
The brain is deeper than the sea
For hold them blue to blue
The one the other will absorb
As sponges buckets do
The brain is just the weight of God
For heft them pound for pound
And they will differ if they do
As syllable from sound'
EMILY DICKINSON, ‘THE BRAIN IS WIDER THAN THE SKY’, 1862
‘Blue has no dimensions. All colors bring forth associations of concrete, material, and tangible ideas, while blue evokes all the more the sea and the sky, which are what is most abstract in tangible and visible nature’
YVES KLEIN
‘While working on my paintings in my studio I sometimes used sponges. Evidently, they very quickly turned blue! One day I perceived the beauty of blue in the sponge, this working tool all of a sudden became a primary medium for me’
YVES KLEIN
Rare for its extraordinarily intimate scale, the present work stands among the very smallest examples of Yves Klein’s groundbreaking Sculpture-Eponges (Sponge- Sculptures). Executed in 1961, the work was originally owned by Paul Wember – author of Klein’s catalogue raisonné – who acquired it directly from the artist. Saturated with the unearthly beauty of his signature pigment – ‘International Klein Blue’, or IKB – the Sculpture-Eponges encapsulate his enduring quest to reveal the immaterial void at the heart of all existence. For Klein, the sponge – an ancient ocean-dwelling creature – was physically indicative of the wonder and mystery of nature. When impregnated with the pure, deep intensity of IKB, it came to symbolise the mind’s ability to absorb and perceive the unknown dimensions of reality. Evolving from his series of blue monochromes, the Sculpture- Eponges were conceived as portraits of Klein’s viewers, visually representing the all-encompassing and transcendent effect of IKB upon the brain. The unique shade of blue, engineered to maximum brilliance, was construed as a living entity that had the power to transport the onlooker beyond the earthbound realm. The sponge, with its powers of absorption and retention, embodied man’s capacity to sense and internalise the vast spiritual domain that lay beyond human consciousness. With its rich natural topography of ridges and craters, the present work quivers under the incidences of light, soaking up pigment with no trace of the artist’s input. Blossoming organically from its base like a delicate flower, it offers a material vision of the immaterial, placing the viewer in direct communion with the raw, mystical essence of IKB.
Though influenced by the developments of the Space Age, Klein’s philosophies were ultimately rooted in alchemical notions that had fascinated him since boyhood. His quest for a transcendental pigment began in 1947: sitting on a rocky beach in Nice beside his friends Arman and Claude Pascal, he declared ‘the blue sky is my first artwork’ (Y. Klein, quoted by Arman in T. McEvilley, ‘Yves Klein: Conquistador of the Void’, in Yves Klein 1928- 1962: A Retrospective, exh. cat., Institute for the Arts, Rice University, Houston, 1982, p. 46). Having grown up surrounded by the deep azure of the Mediterranean, Klein considered blue to be the most immaterial of all shades: a boundless, dimensionless hue, born of the infinite territories of sea and sky – the colour of Giotto Bondone’s celestial frescoes in the Basilica of San Francesco d’Assisi. While working on his early series of IKB monochromes, Klein made a serendipitous discovery. Seeking a uniform texture for his newly-developed ultramarine tone, he often used sponges to apply the pigment. ‘Evidently, they very quickly turned blue!’, he explained. ‘One day I perceived the beauty of blue in the sponge; this working tool all of a sudden became a primary medium for me. The sponge has that extraordinary capacity to absorb and become impregnated with whatever fluid, which was naturally very seductive to me. Thanks to the natural and living nature of sponges, I was able to make portraits to the readers of my monochromes, which, after having seen and travelled into the blue of my paintings, returned from them completely impregnated with sensibility, just as the sponges’ (Y. Klein, in Overcoming the Problematics of Art: The Writings of Yves Klein, New York 2007, p. 22). Klein originally began attaching sponges to his monochromes, before relinquishing the canvas completely in favour of free-standing sculpture. The sponge, once painted with IKB, was coated in a highly volatile fixative that caused the colour to ‘hover’ illusively over the surface.
In 1959, Klein mounted a pioneering exhibition at Galerie Iris Clert, displaying a veritable forest of sponge sculptures and reliefs alongside his monochrome paintings. Titled Bas-reliefs dans une forêt d’éponges, the installation presented an immersive, otherworldly environment: a natural landscape infused with the mysteries of the void. The following year, Klein registered the formula for IKB at the Institut national de la propriété industrielle, believing he had arrived at the colour in its purest form. Unlike gold and ‘madder rose’ – the two other components of his holy chromatic trilogy – IKB was able to absorb all visible light rays except the deepest blue, thereby endowing the sponge with a sense of both dense solidity and fathomless void. As Kerry Brougher explains, ‘In effect, the sponges reversed the flow of the monochromes … the zero degree of Klein’s blue monochromes gave way to an absorption into this world of the “other side”, a way of demonstrating the immaterial in something material, a means of bringing the invisible spiritual realm into the dominion of flesh’ (K. Brougher, ‘Involuntary Painting’, in Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers, exh. cat., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D. C., 2010, p. 34). The infinite, cosmic space of the monochrome was drawn into physical reality through the sponge – just as the human brain had the power to register the immaterial. The properties of IKB would be further explored in Klein’s series of Reliefs planétaires, as well as his Anthropométries, in which living human bodies became vessels for his patented pigment. In the refined dimensions of the present work, we witness Klein’s so-called ‘Blue Revolution’ at its most concentrated: a vision of base, earthbound substance imbued with the essence of a higher dimension.