I OFFER YOU BLUE
Last week my friend in Ohio had a birthday – one for which I have yet to extend a greeting and/or celebration. I have been away on travels and trials, far too caught up in my own existence. I have been thinking, though, of how I should commemorate the occasion of her thirty years. I am still not quite sure of how one really does such a thing, but something she once wrote came to mind in the process:
So, for your birthday – and I am sure you will know who you are – I wish to share with you one such moment of mine, an experience of art that I cannot recommend enough, a brief encounter which I knew I would hate and now admit could never have been more wrong in that expectation.
A few years back I went to MOMA – this is back before the new MOMA opened up. I wandered through the galleries at my usual rapid clip – I can get through a hell of a lot of art in a very short period of time since I generally consider most of what I see as crap. About an hour into my high-speed stroll through the museum I hit the color-field painting room – in expectation of yet more of Barnett Newman’s pseudo-sublime self-indulgence I immediately dropped my head and quickened the pace. Seeing as this was a circular gallery – or at least is in my recollection – there was no straight line out. As I took the curve at full speed and was about to reach escape velocity I was arrested dead still, mid-stride, just a few feet from the door. From the corner of my vision I was captured by one of the most stunning paintings I have ever seen, extraordinary, radiant, mesmerizing, and seductive. Yves Klein’s Blue Monochrome of 1961.
It stood there on the wall about six and a half feet tall, glowing at me. This was blue. I mean, freaking blue, abso-fucking-lutely blue, but subtle. It screamed out blue, electric, incandescent blue, but it didn’t raise its voice at all. It radiated the deepest, most intense blue I had ever seen; yet at the same time it seemed to reflect my face, my body in its surface. But it didn’t, at least not quite. I felt my reflection in the blue more than saw it. I was captivated, held by it. I couldn’t believe it because I hate this kind of crap. The color-field room should have been my own personal hell, but there I was, staring, absorbing, absorbed. Then I got it, I got Yves Klein – at least when he wasn’t performing his misogyny with breasts and paint. He was not painting a sublime void, he had nothing to do with Barnett Newman’s past. In fact this painting had nothing to do with the void, but instead the leap.
If you don’t know what I am talking about here, this is Yves Klein’s classic photomontage Leap into the Void of 1960. This painting is not about the void, the space – or absence thereof – into which one leaps. It is that leap, the moment after the decision is made, the it is too late, the deed is done and now I must have faith. It is the glowing, vibrant vitality of nothing else to do but continue, to experience the decision after it has been made. It is becoming an observer of one’s own observations. It is resonant and deep and lush while still seeming razor sharp and dangerous.
I can’t remember how long I looked at the painting that day – though it wasn’t one of those cinematic moments where one is roused by a guard having spent hours unknowingly in the museum but now it is closing time. I looked for a minute or two and then walked away. It wasn’t about duration, it was that mid-step arrest that it made. It was the experience of captivation, of being suspended in-between that it offered and demanded. Just an instant – or a moment – was plenty. Every once in a while I remember it, come across that experience, or even capture it in my work; that, as you put it “breath-catch” of a moment that resonates and resounds.
So, dear friend, I implore you to go to the MOMA, to race through the galleries, to hide from the works in order to be halted, to be taken hold of, to be held up in mid-leap by this painting. I also wish you a happy birthday – although a week late.
“I'm pretty predictable: bright primary (but not neon) colors, the boldness of the unexpected, the breath-catch of a painstakingly meticulous easy detail.”
So, for your birthday – and I am sure you will know who you are – I wish to share with you one such moment of mine, an experience of art that I cannot recommend enough, a brief encounter which I knew I would hate and now admit could never have been more wrong in that expectation.
A few years back I went to MOMA – this is back before the new MOMA opened up. I wandered through the galleries at my usual rapid clip – I can get through a hell of a lot of art in a very short period of time since I generally consider most of what I see as crap. About an hour into my high-speed stroll through the museum I hit the color-field painting room – in expectation of yet more of Barnett Newman’s pseudo-sublime self-indulgence I immediately dropped my head and quickened the pace. Seeing as this was a circular gallery – or at least is in my recollection – there was no straight line out. As I took the curve at full speed and was about to reach escape velocity I was arrested dead still, mid-stride, just a few feet from the door. From the corner of my vision I was captured by one of the most stunning paintings I have ever seen, extraordinary, radiant, mesmerizing, and seductive. Yves Klein’s Blue Monochrome of 1961.It stood there on the wall about six and a half feet tall, glowing at me. This was blue. I mean, freaking blue, abso-fucking-lutely blue, but subtle. It screamed out blue, electric, incandescent blue, but it didn’t raise its voice at all. It radiated the deepest, most intense blue I had ever seen; yet at the same time it seemed to reflect my face, my body in its surface. But it didn’t, at least not quite. I felt my reflection in the blue more than saw it. I was captivated, held by it. I couldn’t believe it because I hate this kind of crap. The color-field room should have been my own personal hell, but there I was, staring, absorbing, absorbed. Then I got it, I got Yves Klein – at least when he wasn’t performing his misogyny with breasts and paint. He was not painting a sublime void, he had nothing to do with Barnett Newman’s past. In fact this painting had nothing to do with the void, but instead the leap.
If you don’t know what I am talking about here, this is Yves Klein’s classic photomontage Leap into the Void of 1960. This painting is not about the void, the space – or absence thereof – into which one leaps. It is that leap, the moment after the decision is made, the it is too late, the deed is done and now I must have faith. It is the glowing, vibrant vitality of nothing else to do but continue, to experience the decision after it has been made. It is becoming an observer of one’s own observations. It is resonant and deep and lush while still seeming razor sharp and dangerous. I can’t remember how long I looked at the painting that day – though it wasn’t one of those cinematic moments where one is roused by a guard having spent hours unknowingly in the museum but now it is closing time. I looked for a minute or two and then walked away. It wasn’t about duration, it was that mid-step arrest that it made. It was the experience of captivation, of being suspended in-between that it offered and demanded. Just an instant – or a moment – was plenty. Every once in a while I remember it, come across that experience, or even capture it in my work; that, as you put it “breath-catch” of a moment that resonates and resounds.
So, dear friend, I implore you to go to the MOMA, to race through the galleries, to hide from the works in order to be halted, to be taken hold of, to be held up in mid-leap by this painting. I also wish you a happy birthday – although a week late.
2 Comments:
Merci beaucoup, my dear. I will indeed visit your painting the next time I go to MOMA; I haven't been there since the renovation reopened, but I hope I'll be able to get there this summer.
I must go this summer as well. Perhaps the wife and I could meet you there. I must see the new MOMA as well. They are also having a DADA show this summer which I cannot wait to see.
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