Page 46 - Studio International - September October 1975

(divine), so much so that he was happy
to declare at the exhibition: 'I burst into
monochrome space, into the All, into the
incommensurable pictorial sensibility.
I did not burst into it enclosed in my
personality, no. Using myself
volumetrically I felt myself outside all
propositions and dimensions in the All.
I met, or rather I felt myself grasped by
the presence of many beings in space,
none of them human, however: no-one
had reached there before me.' Obviously,
between Fontana's spatial environments
and Klein's void, there is an oscillation
between a totality which is lived and a

Ed Kienholz Roxy's 1961

totality which is thought or immaterial.
The former accepts the concrete quality
of its gesture, and makes it into an
Yves Klein The Void 1958, at the Iris Clert Gallery, Paris
`object' and luminous 'trace,' while the
latter, aspiring to 'transcend itself,' is
with his own existential problems : the moving luminous lines. The latter trying to reach 'cosmic regression.'
actual working process of an artist no environment gives rise to those works These poles of the materialistic and the
longer seemed to have any value, and which were designed from 1951 onwards spiritual, of the full and the empty, of
neither did there seem to be any valid with neon tubes, organized informally the concrete and the invisible, of presence
external reasons for his activity. There and hung or arranged on the ceiling and and absence, form the basis for the
was no point in nursing an illusion: it the ground. development, from 196o on, of all
was necessary for him to give himself a While Fontana and Pollock were environmental experiments which in the
meaning and to find a justification for his aiming at the construction of their own last 15 years have been carried out in
being an artist. Ignoring both functional space and action-time, this dozens of 'spaces.' I shall deal with them
and transcendental criteria, the artist responsibility was rejected by Yves here theoretically rather than individually.
set out to create for himself a casing Klein, when in 1958 he presented his (a) Object-Space. With the arrival of
(large-size canvas) in which to 'act.' Void at the Iris Clert gallery in Paris. Neo-Dada and Nouveau Realisme,
This casing was a mark of mistrust of the Showing the whitewashed walls of the the artist found the courage to throw
external and of faith in the internal gallery to be full of immaterial pictorial himself into the world again and to take
(artistic individual and media). It was at sensibility, Klein seemed to be aspiring on all its `vulgarity'; consequently
this point that painting, from Pollock to to a material ascension which could make subjectivity was replaced by
Newman, Fontana to Klein, expanded, him free of his confines. The void, which objectivity. As this objectivity was
reaching from ceiling to floor and for him is mystical, represents in its brought into the foreground, the banal
becoming 'environmental painting.' intelligibility the spirit and the All things of everyday life entered the
Both the individual painter and the territory of art. This renewed contact with
medium of painting itself saw in this kind mundane things produced 'object-space.'
of work the possibility of salvation : the Inside this space, as in Schwitters'
casing turned out to be a secure 'lap' work, various 'clippings' from the world
from which the artist could give free rein are accumulated with a love-hate
to his impulses and investigate his own relationship. The linear stalactites of the
activity as he pleased. Dadaist cathedral are replaced by
In 1949-5o Pollock and Fontana utilitarian objects such as bottles,
created an environmental field through a newspapers, tables, chairs, lamps,
painting which seemed to open the way advertising posters, ice cream cones,
for an autonomous, self-sufficient clothes and so on.
achievement in the sphere of This proliferation of 'daily signs' is
environmental art. If Pollock's work indiscriminate and chaotic. The object-
remained at the level of intention, with fields made by Arman, Dine, Oldenburg,
Fontana's work we arrive at the real Kienholz and Kaprow encompass, in
construction of 'spatial environments.' disorderly fashion, the greatest possible
In 1949, inside a room with the walls, quantity of items. The lustful desire to
ceiling and floor painted completely possess the world drives the artist to
black, he traced in fluorescent paint a inflate the environment with 'sensual'
series of points similar to the holes in his fragments brought in from the street.
canvas, which Wood's lighting In 196o, in reply to Klein's ascetic
subsequently revealed to the spectator. `void', Arman accumulated within the
In the same year, inside the spatial Iris Clert Gallery in Paris, to the point
field he used rows of coloured glass hung of filling it completely, all kinds of street
from the ceiling, on which Wood's objects. Kaprow made a tactile field
lighting produced similar effects in Claes Oldenburg The Store 1965 in his garage, made out of coloured

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