Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
I was walking past a gallery in Düsseldorf in 1957 when I saw a blue monochrome painting in the window. I stopped and just stood in front of it. I was deeply touched by the way the artist could evoke something immaterial, spiritual, through colour. It took me into the sky and made me think of our galaxy, of where we are in the universe.
It wasn’t until a year later that I met the artist who painted it. I was working in Nice, France, as an au pair for the artist Arman and his family. One night, when he and his wife were out, I heard somebody at the front door saying that he was Yves Klein and that he wished to see Arman. Having seen the show in Düsseldorf, I admired him. I had imagined what he might be like, what his spirit would be like and how he would look. But I didn’t let him in. I knew I shouldn’t let anybody in. I told him to come back the next day. When he returned, I saw a beautiful man with a charming smile and a beautiful presence. He touched my heart.
Later on, he asked me to see his studio in Haut-de-Cagnes. He was working on a monochrome. I sat and watched him paint; he would come over to talk to me and then go back to painting. We listened to music. I think he saw me as understanding him. I had a good grounding through my brother, Günther Uecker, who was one of the three founders of the Zero group, a collective of artists who were interested in light and motion.
Before me, the women around Yves would often say, “Oh, that blue you always do”, a little mocking and a little admiring. They didn’t really understand how important he was as an artist. For me he was on the top of the mountain. I thought he was just divine – the best, the highest. I had a huge respect for him. Between us there was a kind of oneness, an osmosis. We could not speak but we’d understand things at the same time or think the same thing. It was just very easy. I had four years of living with him before he died in 1962, aged 34, but I feel it was a life of a hundred years because it was so full, so rich.
Yves was a very disciplined man. I think it came from his judo education in Japan. He taught me to position my shoes together and in one place, so you don’t go to bed and just throw your shoes. You hold on to some discipline, to a little order. He had a reputation for doing things repeatedly because he wanted to find perfection. Being with Yves was like when you go to the theatre and a really good actor enters the scene but doesn’t do anything, he’s just there. You feel this presence. It came from his understanding of the immaterial: what the body can express without doing too much. It’s a kind of spirituality.
When he worked, Yves would play symphonies by Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner. It was almost like a ceremony, when the models were covered in blue paint and working with him on the floor. Sometimes I see the music in the paintings, like in ANT 77, with its movement from side to side, almost to the movement of the music being played.
Experiencing his Monotone Symphony for the first time in 1958 was an emotional event for me. It’s an orchestral performance of a single chord, D-major, for 20 minutes, followed by 20 minutes of silence. What I heard was so powerful that I wished I could hear it again and again. And when you hear the silence after the music, you really notice how rich, how full silence can be. You need this time to get the resonance of the symphony, to relive it. It’s so special. And people feel it, they don’t try to get up and leave. They are very respectful. It will be wonderful to listen to it again in New York for this new exhibition. There’s always something so spiritual about the experience.
I hope that a new generation will be happy to see the exhibition: it’s going to be extraordinary to view all the different pieces but I don’t want to reveal the details of the work. It is up to visitors to discover. You need to be with them to feel their presence. That’s when you feel it in your heart. It goes beyond thinking, beyond the brain. It’s so important, I think, to define the feelings you get from each piece. Don’t go off and just look at the pictures one after the other. That doesn’t do anything to you. You need time. It’s like a person: if you want to feel a person’s presence, what she’s really like, you have to spend some time with her. To feel what kind of person she is.
Yves Klein and the Tangible World is at Lévy Gorvy Dayan until 25 May, levygorvydayan.com
As told to Baya Simons
