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Lot Essay
This work is recorded in the archive under no. SE 218 and will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné.
'One day I noticed the beauty of the blue in the sponge; in an instant this working instrument became raw material for me. It is the sponge's extraordinary capacity to impregnate itself with anything fluid that attracted me' (Y. Klein, quoted in O. Berggruen, M. Hollein, I. Pfeiffer, (eds.), Yves Klein, exh. cat., Ostfildern-Ruit, 2004, p. 90).
'While working on my paintings in the studio, I sometimes used sponges. Very quickly they obviously became blue! One day I noticed the beauty of the blue in the sponge; in an instant this working instrument became raw material for me. It is the sponge's extraordinary capacity to impregnate itself with anything fluid that attracted me' (Y. Klein, quoted in O. Berggruen, M. Hollein, I. Pfeiffer, (ed.), Yves Klein, exh. cat., Ostfildern-Ruit, 2004, p. 90).
Created circa 1960, SE 218 is one of Yves Klein's early sponge sculptures, dating from only shortly after he had begun to create this important and revolutionary group of works. For Klein, the sponge provided the perfect paradigm for his fascination with the Immaterial, which was represented by the intense blue which he had developed and would indeed patent under the name IKB - or International Klein Blue. This was the blue of the sea, of the sky, and of the infinite, a shimmering colour that instilled a sense of mystery and potential in his viewers. Klein's sponge sculptures would reach their apogee in 1959, just before SE 218 was created, when Klein showed a number of them in conjunction with some of his monochrome pictures at the Galerie Iris Clert in Paris, in a show entitled Bas-reliefs dans une forêt d'éponges, creating what appeared to be an entire otherworldly environment filled with blue sponges, many of them floating, as in this work, above their bases. Meanwhile, another monumental example of Klein's fascination with the sponge would be created in the colossal sponge relief murals he created for the opera house at Gelsenkirchen during the same period.
The sponge appeared as a central motif in Klein's work early in his career, shortly after he had developed his theories regarding the Immaterial that he had first captured in his blue monochromes - the IKB's'. This places the sponges among Klein's most seminal works. Klein's 'IKB' was a still-recent invention when SE 218 was made, and yet it had rapidly proliferated, allowing Klein to spread his messages of the Immaterial and the Void far and wide and to increasing international acclaim, not least through his revolutionary exhibitions and performances at the Galerie Iris Clert.
This process had arguably begun in Italy, with his Proposte monochrome, epoca blu exhibition in 1957, held at the Galleria Apollinaire in Milan, where blue pictures had been exhibited alongside each other (one of which was acquired by Lucio Fontana, who himself would become fascinated by the power of the monochrome). The sponge sculptures such as SE 218 were a direct result of these early examples of Klein's 'Blue Period'. Klein recalled that their genesis in his oeuvre came about when he was painting his monochromes:
'While working on my paintings in the studio, I sometimes used sponges. Very quickly they obviously became blue! One day I noticed the beauty of the blue in the sponge; in an instant this working instrument became raw material for me. It is the sponge's extraordinary capacity to impregnate itself with anything fluid that attracted me' (Y. Klein, quoted in O. Berggruen, M. Hollein, I. Pfeiffer, (eds.), Yves Klein, exh. cat., Ostfildern-Ruit, 2004, p. 90).
Thus the sponge sculptures emerged from his paintings. Their relationship with the process and tradition of painting was also reflected in the fact that his first sponge sculpture used a large example which had been given to him by the owner of a paint shop, Edouard Adam, who had had it in his window display (see S. Stich, Yves Klein, Ostfildern, 1994, p. 90).
Klein used this formerly living, breathing and absorbing entity to provide a form of sculptural metaphor, a vehicle for many meanings. Perched on its support, SE 218 appears as a world in its own right, a perforated planet-like form hovering within the space of its own mini-Cosmos - our realm. For Klein, the transformation of the sponge into a blue entity as it absorbed the paint, sucking it up and taking on its hue, mirrored the process by which he wished to instil his sensibility of the Immaterial into his viewers: 'Thanks to the sponges - living, savage material - I was able to make portraits of the readers of my monochromes who, after having seen, after having travelled in the blue of my paintings, come back totally impregnated in sensibility like the sponges' (Y. Klein, quoted in ibid., p. 165). This medium, the ancient, organic creature from the sea bed, from the natural world, features an incredibly porous surface, allowing the absorption of the paint. Placed by Klein within an artistic context, this recalls the texture of the raked gravel gardens and the rocks of the Japanese temple gardens that had so fascinated Klein during his journey there in the early 1950s. That link between SE 218 and the act of contemplation or meditation indicates the cerebral processes that Klein hoped to inspire in his viewers, as well as the emotional ones. The fact that SE 218 and some of the other sculptures from this group are held up by cords which resemble a sort of spinal cord hanging from a brain thus adds an extra layer of implication to this reading. Meanwhile, the mysterious blue entities such as SE 218 floating within our own environment, introduce a distinct otherworldliness, as though we were upon some ocean floor of the imagination, already treading in the realm of the Immaterial.
'One day I noticed the beauty of the blue in the sponge; in an instant this working instrument became raw material for me. It is the sponge's extraordinary capacity to impregnate itself with anything fluid that attracted me' (Y. Klein, quoted in O. Berggruen, M. Hollein, I. Pfeiffer, (eds.), Yves Klein, exh. cat., Ostfildern-Ruit, 2004, p. 90).
'While working on my paintings in the studio, I sometimes used sponges. Very quickly they obviously became blue! One day I noticed the beauty of the blue in the sponge; in an instant this working instrument became raw material for me. It is the sponge's extraordinary capacity to impregnate itself with anything fluid that attracted me' (Y. Klein, quoted in O. Berggruen, M. Hollein, I. Pfeiffer, (ed.), Yves Klein, exh. cat., Ostfildern-Ruit, 2004, p. 90).
Created circa 1960, SE 218 is one of Yves Klein's early sponge sculptures, dating from only shortly after he had begun to create this important and revolutionary group of works. For Klein, the sponge provided the perfect paradigm for his fascination with the Immaterial, which was represented by the intense blue which he had developed and would indeed patent under the name IKB - or International Klein Blue. This was the blue of the sea, of the sky, and of the infinite, a shimmering colour that instilled a sense of mystery and potential in his viewers. Klein's sponge sculptures would reach their apogee in 1959, just before SE 218 was created, when Klein showed a number of them in conjunction with some of his monochrome pictures at the Galerie Iris Clert in Paris, in a show entitled Bas-reliefs dans une forêt d'éponges, creating what appeared to be an entire otherworldly environment filled with blue sponges, many of them floating, as in this work, above their bases. Meanwhile, another monumental example of Klein's fascination with the sponge would be created in the colossal sponge relief murals he created for the opera house at Gelsenkirchen during the same period.
The sponge appeared as a central motif in Klein's work early in his career, shortly after he had developed his theories regarding the Immaterial that he had first captured in his blue monochromes - the IKB's'. This places the sponges among Klein's most seminal works. Klein's 'IKB' was a still-recent invention when SE 218 was made, and yet it had rapidly proliferated, allowing Klein to spread his messages of the Immaterial and the Void far and wide and to increasing international acclaim, not least through his revolutionary exhibitions and performances at the Galerie Iris Clert.
This process had arguably begun in Italy, with his Proposte monochrome, epoca blu exhibition in 1957, held at the Galleria Apollinaire in Milan, where blue pictures had been exhibited alongside each other (one of which was acquired by Lucio Fontana, who himself would become fascinated by the power of the monochrome). The sponge sculptures such as SE 218 were a direct result of these early examples of Klein's 'Blue Period'. Klein recalled that their genesis in his oeuvre came about when he was painting his monochromes:
'While working on my paintings in the studio, I sometimes used sponges. Very quickly they obviously became blue! One day I noticed the beauty of the blue in the sponge; in an instant this working instrument became raw material for me. It is the sponge's extraordinary capacity to impregnate itself with anything fluid that attracted me' (Y. Klein, quoted in O. Berggruen, M. Hollein, I. Pfeiffer, (eds.), Yves Klein, exh. cat., Ostfildern-Ruit, 2004, p. 90).
Thus the sponge sculptures emerged from his paintings. Their relationship with the process and tradition of painting was also reflected in the fact that his first sponge sculpture used a large example which had been given to him by the owner of a paint shop, Edouard Adam, who had had it in his window display (see S. Stich, Yves Klein, Ostfildern, 1994, p. 90).
Klein used this formerly living, breathing and absorbing entity to provide a form of sculptural metaphor, a vehicle for many meanings. Perched on its support, SE 218 appears as a world in its own right, a perforated planet-like form hovering within the space of its own mini-Cosmos - our realm. For Klein, the transformation of the sponge into a blue entity as it absorbed the paint, sucking it up and taking on its hue, mirrored the process by which he wished to instil his sensibility of the Immaterial into his viewers: 'Thanks to the sponges - living, savage material - I was able to make portraits of the readers of my monochromes who, after having seen, after having travelled in the blue of my paintings, come back totally impregnated in sensibility like the sponges' (Y. Klein, quoted in ibid., p. 165). This medium, the ancient, organic creature from the sea bed, from the natural world, features an incredibly porous surface, allowing the absorption of the paint. Placed by Klein within an artistic context, this recalls the texture of the raked gravel gardens and the rocks of the Japanese temple gardens that had so fascinated Klein during his journey there in the early 1950s. That link between SE 218 and the act of contemplation or meditation indicates the cerebral processes that Klein hoped to inspire in his viewers, as well as the emotional ones. The fact that SE 218 and some of the other sculptures from this group are held up by cords which resemble a sort of spinal cord hanging from a brain thus adds an extra layer of implication to this reading. Meanwhile, the mysterious blue entities such as SE 218 floating within our own environment, introduce a distinct otherworldliness, as though we were upon some ocean floor of the imagination, already treading in the realm of the Immaterial.