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Klein — Olivia Grandville — teaser
Created in 2020
The lecture given by Yves Klein at the Sorbonne in 1959 and the text written shortly before, Le dépassement de la problématique de l’art (Overcoming the Problem of Art), are the starting point for this project.
Yves Klein, a visionary artist of the second half of the 20th century, ushered us into the era of space and the immaterial. From this perspective, he was a pioneer. “Le saut dans le vide” (The Leap into the Void) is the mother of all subsequent performances, the matrix of conceptual art, at least in post-war France.
Klein also wrote The Fundamentals of Judo, a meticulously detailed manual that is still considered authoritative today. He was both a conceptual artist and a grand master of judo! The rarity of this dual skill, along with its consistency with the artist’s work, is worth mentioning. Yves Klein is known for his famous blue, but less so for his mastery of the art of judo, which he considered his first experience of a spiritual space.
He explored this space in particular in the legendary lecture recorded at the Sorbonne in 1959 with architect Werner Ruhnau. Insightful, funny, and sometimes delirious, the lecture develops the concept of the immateriality of art in opposition to the prevailing materialism. It presents a sensitive space to be inhabited and invested in rather than a space to be occupied “as tourists.” Yves Klein takes his demonstration so far as to propose a school of sensitivity, presenting its organizational chart, calendar, budget, etc.
For Olivia Grandville, the text of this lecture offers a clear continuation of her work on Lettrism – Le Cabaret discrépant – and on the poet Schwitters – Le K de E; Beaucoup de colle préconise Kurt Schwitters. Attentive to historical moments in art where gesture is articulated through speech, where words become performative, she links the artist’s programmatic and poetic discourse to the master martial arts expert.
Yves Klein is reincarnated through the voice of actor Manuel Vallade, illuminated by Benoit de Villeneuve’s stratospheric music and punctuated by the graphic and brutally sonorous movements of two judokas from Nantes, Emmanuel Gourmelin and Dominique Dijol.
Acknowledgements Ludovic Empis, Emmanuel Monnaux, the Maison des arts martiaux de Nantes.
With the kind permission of the Yves Klein Archives; the text excerpts attributed to Iris Clert are taken from Teodoro Gilabert’s book, Quelques nuances de Klein, published by Invenit, Lille, 2020. ©Teodoro Gilabert and Invenit.
With the support of the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès as part of the New Settings program.
With the assistance of the “Un été culturel” program of the Ministère de la Culture/DRAC des Pays de la Loire.
