Page 53 - Studio International - July August 1973

RECENT mind-catching qualities that seduce post-Cubist sculpture has managed. Yves Klein at Gimpel Fils, London,
avant-garde acclaim. 'No puffisme to
Each side of the compromise, the
30 May — 23 June
deceive the fools', as Pissarro once temperature either cools into The Gimpel Fils gallery had a show of
LONDON put it. By fashionable criteria he was melancholic reserve or boils off into an works by Yves Klein which covered
the years 1957 to 1962, the year of
excess of waste energy. But these are
something of a heavy, taken for
granted as pushing out a constant untypical occurrences once into his his death. The catalogue listed sixty-
SHOWS stream of good solid work. stride. seven items but, in fact, there were
The sculpture that has formed this
only sixteen exhibits on display.
He first hit it right in the early 20s
impression has been chiefly of two with a series of unexpectedly This was unfortunate because not
Jacques Lipchitz at Marlborough sorts. Firstly there was Lipchitz the inventive images. The bronze much of Klein's work has been shown
Fine Art 18 May — 8 June cubist sculptor, one of several who Musical Instruments (1925) shows it in this country and he deserves a
This show of sculpture and drawings struggled against heavy odds into all : the sense of scale, the freedom in fuller, less parsimonious
was largely selected by the artist maturity and at the same time tried to space and the hard bargaining representation. The show included,
himself. It was transformed by make sense of the painting idiom that between folds, curves and edges. Its however, selections from the
Lipchitz's death last month from a had up-ended most traditional exuberant vulgarity underlines the Monochromes, Cosmogonies,
working retrospective into an criteria. Secondly, since the 1940s, release from Cubism : the classic Anthropométries, and Peintures de
auto-obituary. there has been Lipchitz the cubist motif is bent, creased and Feu series which comprise the main
The Lipchitz discussed and established public sculptor, maker of fingered into a lumbering animated phases of his brief career. Klein was
illustrated in the history books and massive monuments. In each case he monument. Although unmistakably of a reputed hot-shot in the fifties but
glossies is not the Lipchitz you meet was probably on a par with the 20s and at home in the company much of his work now seems
here, any more than he was the contemporaries, but neither shows of current Léger and Picasso, it is debilitated and thin. The exception is,
simple emotional Jewish poet him at his best. colossally original. No other modelled of course, the blue monochrome
described in emotional Jewish Looking back, the lesser-known sculpture of the 20s could touch this paintings which are still powerful
biographies. It is a strange paradox work of the 20s and early 30s seems sort of configuration, with its and explicit. But the view that Klein
that a sculptor as conscious as he was the high point: Lipchitz's own disturbing confrontation in space of tended to squander his art in mindless
molten and rigid slabs. The 30s and pranks is true. He was certainly better
40s owe a lot to it. Its strange, heavy than his European contemporaries
sign-language, poised on a small foot, but, as one writer has noted, he was
anticipates early David Smith. Around the biggest frog in a rather stagnant
the same time he made a string of pond.
open cage-like figures that equally Klein was born in France in 1928.
were first in their field. He had no formal art education but
Musical Instruments is 33 inches his interest in art was prompted by his
high and Lipchitz's optimum scale parents who were both artists. His
seems somewhere between here and early interests were Dada and
the roughly human scale of Figure. Surrealism. In adolescence he began
He identified with the small pieces as to develop a quasi-mystical theory of
the vital working arena of his oeuvre. art which he called 'monochromie'
Of the later works too, the maquettes and which resulted in a series of
look strongest. Modelling, he knew, monochromatic paintings. These
was his true medium, his hands in were first shown in the early 1950s.
intuitive rapport with wax and clay, In 1957 he exhibited a set of almost
uncluttered by other considerations. identical monochromatic paintings
On this intimate studio scale he had which were distinguished by their
found himself; absolute master of intense and luxurious ultramarine
curves, hollows and the broken surfaces. Klein named this colour
surface. 'IKB' (International Klein Blue) and
Coming out into the open, on to used it obsessively throughout his
the massive scale of his public career. 'Blue has no dimensions, it is
monuments—this was where beyond dimensions, whereas the
tradition trapped him, while Smith, for other colours are not. They are
example, could get away. In these pre-psychological expanses, red,
he seemed lured into an obligatorily for example, presupposing a site
baroque sense of theatre, a grand radiating heat. All colours arouse
opera of mythology, and away from specific associative ideas,
the arena of formal invention in which psychologically material or tangible,
he was so strong and prolific. while blue suggests at most the sea
Rhythms inevitably slow and the and sky, and they after all, are in
whole charge of his personality dies actual, visible nature what is most
back. A pretentious formal flourish abstract'.
takes over and, often, the scale The shenanigans began in 1958
swamps the formal concept. when he presented a show in Paris
Jacques Lipchitz Musical Instruments 1925. Bronze, 33in. high Perhaps he was the last of the called The Void which took the form
generation to retain from the of an empty gallery space. The
of past and present history should selection for the Marlborough show nineteenth century that sense of exhibition was widely acclaimed. In
lose so much in being measured dwells on this period. He found public sculpture in a way that the same year he created the first of
against history; when the bronze himself here and the visual impact of approaches split personality for the his Anthropométries by imprinting
facts— considered in their own right— the show is robustly physical, modern sculptor. paint-smeared female torsos on
tell such a different story. uncerebral and full of an urgent, In some ways Cubism was a more canvas. Klein's activities became
Undeniably he was a major unembarrassed vitality. traumatic ride for the sculptor than the increasingly theatrical — the
sculptor, one of the great sculptors of The two formal extremes of his painter. Boccioni might have made it Anthropométries were often
this century. Full acknowledgement of work lie in a severe angularity that had he lived, but of that generation produced in front of large audiences —
this status has been and, I suspect, disciplined his early and Cubist which opted to stay with clay and and he began to indulge his fondness
will remain a gradual, somewhat sculpture and a loose, flowing, bronze, only Lipchitz saw sculpture for extravagant stunts. These were
grudging process. He was one of sometimes over-rich Baroque idiom. through and beyond Cubism to a well-publicized and they quickly
many big fish in first the Parisian and His great strength and achievement formed modern idiom. In its established his reputation as an
then the American pool. Lipchitz was in forcing these two extremes emphasis on time and scale, the avant-garde artist.
hadn't that edge, that cool ; nor together. All of his best work— Marlborough show was a rich Many of the younger European
sharpness of wit, nor demure whether open and linear or densely instant-memorial to this artists around this time, including
sophistication, nor aescetic massive — is alive with this tense achievement. q Klein, were avowedly avant-garde.
discipline—none of those eye- or fusion in a way that no-one else in NICHOLAS WADLEY The term is useless now and was
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