THE
CHELSEA HOTEL MANIFESTO
Due to the fact that I have painted monochromes for fifteen years,
Due to the fact that I have created pictorial immaterial states,
Due to the fact that I have manipulated the forces of the void,
Due to the fact that I have sculpted with fire and with water painted
with fire and with water,
Due to the fact that I have painted with living brushes - in other words,
the nude body of live models covered with paint: these living brushes
were under the constant direction of my commands, such as "a little
to the right; over to the left now: to the right again, etc.."By maintaining
myself at a specific and obligatory distance from the surface to be
painted, I am able to resolve the problem of detachment.
Due to the fact that I have invented the architecture and the urbanism
of air - of course, this new conception transcends the traditional meaning
of the terms "architecture and urbanism" - my goal from the beginning
was to reunite with the legend of Paradise Lost. This project was directed
toward the habitable surface of the Earth by the climatization of the
great geographical expanses through an absolute control over the thermal
and atmospheric situation in their relation to our morphological and
psychical conditions.
Due to the fact that I have proposed a new conception of music with
my "monotone - silence - symphony,"
Due to the fact that I have presented a theatre of the void, among countless
other adventures...
I would never have believed, fifteen years ago at the time of my earliest
efforts, that I would suddenly feel the need to explain myself - to
satisfy the desire to know the reason of all that has occurred and the
even still more dangerous effect, in other words - the influence my
art has had on the young generation of artists throughout the world
today.
It dismays me to hear that a certain number of them think that I represent
a danger to the future of art - that I am one of those disastrous and
noxious results of our time that must be crushed and destroyed before
the propagation of my evil completely takes over.
I regret to reveal that this was not my intention; and to happily proclaim
to those who evince faith in the multiplicity of new possibilities in
the path that I prescribe - Take care! Nothing has crystallized as yet;
nor can I say what will happen after this. I can only say that today
I am no longer as afraid as I was yesterday in the face of the souvenir
of the future.
An artist always feels uneasy when called upon to speak of his own work.
It should speak for itself, particularly when it is valid.
What can I do? Stop now?
No, what I call "the indefinable pictorial sensibility" absolutely escapes
this very personal solution.
So...
I think of those words I was once inspired to write. "Would not the
future artist be he who expressed through an eternal silence an immense
painting possessing no dimension?"
Gallery-goers, like any other public, would carry this immense painting
in their memory (a remembrance which does not derive at all from the
past, but is solely cognizant of the indefinable sensibility of man).
It is necessary to create and recreate a constant physical fluidity
in order to receive the grace which allows a positive creativity of
the the void.
Just as I created a "monotone - silence - symphony" in 1947, composed
in two parts, - one broad continuous sound followed by an equally broad
and extended silence, endowed with a limitless dimension - in the same
way, I attempt to set before you a written painting of the short history
of my art, followed naturally by a pure and effective silence.
My account will close with the creation of a compelling a posteriori
silence whose existence in our communal space, after all - the space
of a single being - is immune to the destructive qualities of physical
noise.
Much depends upon the success of my written painting in its initial
technical and audible phase. Only then will the extraordinary a posteriori
silence, in the midst of noise as well as in the cell of physical silence,
operate in a new and unique zone of pictorial immaterial sensibility.
Having reached today this point in space and knowledge, I propose to
gird my loins, then to draw back in retrospection of the diving board
of my evolution. In the manner of an Olympic diver, in the most classic
technique of the sport, I must prepare for my leap into the future of
today by prudently moving backward, without ever losing sight of the
edge, today consciously attained - the immaterialization of art.
What is the purpose of the retrospective journey in time?
Simply, I wish to avoid that you or I fall under the power of that phenomenon
of dreams, which describes the feelings and landscapes provoked by our
brusque landing in the past. This psychological past is precisely the
anti-space that I put behind me during the adventures of these past
fifteen years.
At present, I am particularly excited by "bad taste". I have the deep
feeling that there exists in the very essence of bad taste a power capable
of creating those things situated far beyond what is traditionally termed
"The Work of Art". I wish to play with human feeling, with its "morbidity"
in a cold and ferocious manner. Only very recently I have become a sort
of grave digger of art (oddly enough, I am using the very terms of my
enemies). Some of my latest works have been coffins and tombs. During
the same time I succeeded in painting with fire, using particularly
powerful and searing gas flames, some of them measuring three to four
meters high. I use these to bathe the surface of the painting in such
a way that it registered the spontaneous trace of fire.
In sum, my goal is twofold: first of all, to register the trace of human
sentimentality in present-day civilization; and then, to register the
trace of fire, which has engendered this very same civilization - that
of the fire itself. And all of this because the void has always been
my constant preoccupation; and I believe that fires burn in the heart
of the void as well as in the heart of man.
All facts that are contradictory are authentic principles of an explanation
of the universe. Truly, fire is one of these principles, essentially
contradictory, one from the other, since it is both the sweetness and
torture that lies at the heart and origin of our civilization. But what
stirs this search for feeling in me through the making of super-graves
and super coffins? What stirs this search in me for the imprint of fire?
Why search for the Trace itself?
Because every work of creation, regardless of its cosmic place, is the
representation of a pure phenomenology - all that is phenomena manifests
itself.
This manifestation is always distinct from form and it is the essence
of the Immediate, the Trace of the Immediate.
A few months ago, for example, I felt the urge to register the signs
of atmospheric behavior by recording the instantaneous traces of spring
showers on a canvas, of south winds, and of lightning (needless to say,
the last-mentioned ended in a catastrophe). For instance, a trip from
Paris to Nice might have been a waste of time had I not spent it profitably
by recording the wind. I placed a canvas, freshly coated with paint,
on the roof of my white Citron. As I drove down Route National 7 at
100 kilometers an hour, the heat, the cold, the light, the wind, and
the rain all combined to age my canvas prematurely. At least thirty
to forty years were condensed into a single day. The only annoying thing
about this project is that for the entire trip I was unable to separate
myself from my painting.
My atmospheric imprints of a few months ago were preceded by vegetal
imprints. After all, my air is to extract and obtain the trace of the
immediate from all natural objects, whatever their origin - be the circumstance
human, animal, vegetable, or atmospheric.
I would like now, with your permission and close attention, to divulge
to you possibly the most important and certainly the most secret phase
of my art. I do not know if you are going to believe me - it is cannibalism.
After all, is it not preferable to be eaten that to be bombed to death?
I can hardly develop this idea that has tormented me for years. I leave
it up to you to draw you own conclusions with regard to the future of
art.
If we step back again, following the lines of my evolution, we arrive
at the moment when I conceived of painting with the aid of living brushes.
That was two years ago. The purpose of this was to be able to attain
a defined and constant distance between myself and the painting during
the time of creation.
Many critics claimed that by this method of painting I was doing nothing
more that recreating the method that has been called "action painting".
But now, I would like to make it clear that this endeavor is distinct
from "action painting" in so far as I am completely detached from all
physical work during the time of creation.
Just to quote one example of the anthropometric errors found within
the deformed ideas spread by the international press - I speak of that
group of Japanese painters who with great refinement used my method
in a strange way. In fact, these painters actually transformed themselves
into living brushes. By diving themselves in color and then rolling
on their canvases, they became representative of ultra-action-painters!
Personally, I would never attempt to smear paint over my body and thus
to become a living brush; to the contrary, I would rather put on my
tuxedo and don white gloves.
It would never cross my mind to soil my hands with paint. Detached and
distant, the work of art must be completed under my eyes and under my
command. As the work begins its completion, I stand there - present
at the ceremony, immaculate, calm, relaxed, perfectly aware of what
is taking place and ready to receive the art being born into the tangible
world.
What directed me towards anthropometry? The answer can be bound in the
work that I make during the years 1956 to 1957 while I took part in
the giant adventure, the creation of pictorial immaterial sensibility.
I had just removed from my studio all earlier works. The result - and
empty studio. All that I could physically do was to remain in my empty
studio and the pictorial immaterial states of creation marvelously unfolded.
However, little by little, I became mistrustful of myself, but never
of the immaterial. From that moment, following the example of all painters,
I hired models. But unlike the other, I merely wanted to work in their
company rather than have them pose for me. I had been spending too much
time alone in the empty studio; I no longer wanted to remain alone with
the marvelous blue void which was in the process of opening.
Though seemingly strange, remember that I was perfectly aware of the
fact that I experienced none of that vertigo, felt by all my predecessors,
when they found themselves face to face with the absolute void that
is, quite naturally, true pictorial space.
But
how long could my security in this awareness endure?
Years ago, the artist went directly to his subject, worked outdoors
in the country, had his feet firmly planted on the ground - it was healthy.
Today, easel-painters have become academics and have reached the point
of shutting themselves in their studios in order to confront the terrifying
mirrors of their canvases. Now the reason I was pushed to use nude models
is all but evident: it was a way of preventing the danger of secluding
myself in the overly spiritual spheres of creation, thus breaking with
the most basic common sense repeatedly affirmed by our incarnate condition.
The shape of the body, its lines, its strange colors hovering between
life and death, hold no interest for me. Only the essential, pure affective
climate of the flesh is valid.
Having
rejected nothingness, I discovered the void. The meaning of the immaterial
pictorial zones, extracted from the depth of the void which by that
time was of a very material order. Finding it unacceptable to sell these
immaterial zones for money, I insisted in exchange for the highest quality
of the immaterial, the highest quality of material payment - a bar of
pure gold. Incredible as it may seem, I have actually sold a number
of these pictorial immaterial states.
So
much could be said about my adventure in the immaterial and the void
that the result would be an overly extended pause while steeped in the
present elaboration of a written painting.
Painting
no longer appeared to me to be functionally related to the gaze, since
during the blue monochrome period of 1957 I became aware of what I called
the pictorial sensibility. This pictorial sensibility exists beyond
our being and yet belongs in our sphere. We hold no right of possession
over life itself. It is only by the intermediary of our taking possession
of sensibility that we are able to purchase life. Sensibility enables
us to pursue life to the level of its base material manifestations,
in the exchange and barter that are the universe of space, the immense
totality of nature.
Imagination
is the vehicle of sensibility!
Transported
by (effective) imagination we attain life, that very life which is absolute
art itself.
Absolute
art, what mortal men call with a sensation of vertigo the summum of
art, materializes instantaneously. It makes its appearance in the tangible
world, even as I remain at a geometrically fixed point, in the wake
of extraordinary volumetric displacements with a static and vertiginous
speed.
The
explanation of the conditions that led me to pictorial sensibility,
is to be found in the intrinsic power of the monochromes of my blue
period of 1957. This period of blue monochromes was the fruit of my
quest for the indefinable in painting which Delacroix the master could
already intimate in his time.
From
1956 to 1946, my monochrome experiments, tried with various other colors
than blue, never allowed me to lose sight of the fundamental truth of
our time - namely that form, henceforth, would no longer be a simple
linear value, but rather a value of impregnation. Once, in 1946, while
still an adolescent, I was to sign my name on the other side of the
sky during a fantastic "realistico-imaginary" journey. That day, as
I lay stretched upon the beach of Nice, I began to feel hatred for birds
which flew back and forth across my blue, cloudless sky, because they
tried to bore holes in my greatest and most beautiful work.
Birds
must be eliminated.
Thus,
we humans will have acquired the right to evolve in full liberty without
any physical and spiritual constraint.
Neither
missiles nor rockets nor sputniks will render man the "conquistador"
of space.
Those
means derive only from the phantom of today's scientists who still live
in the romantic and sentimental spirit of the XIX century.
Man
will only be able to take possession of space through the terrifying
forces, the ones imprinted with peace and sensibility. He will be able
to conquer space - truly his greatest desire - only after having realized
the impregnation of space by his own sensibility. His sensibility can
even read into the memory of nature, be it of the past, of the present,
and of the future!
It
is our true extra-dimensional capacity for action!
If
proofs, precedents or predecessors are needed, let me then cite Dante,
who in the Divine Comedy, described with absolute precision what no
traveler of his time could reasonably have discovered, the invisible
constellation of the Northern Hemisphere known as the Southern Cross;
Jonathan
Swift, in his Voyage to Laputa, gave the distances and periods of rotation
of two satellites of Mars though they were unknown at the time;
When
American astronomer, Asoph Hall, discovered them in 1877, he realized
that his measurements were the same as those of Swift. Seized by panic,
he named them Phobos and Deimos, Fear and Terror! With these two words
- Fear and Terror - I find myself before you in the year 1946, ready
to dive into the void. Long Live the Immaterial
Long Live the Immaterial
And now,
Thank you for your kind attention.
_YVES KLEIN