Chrome abstraction – the use of one color over an entire canvas – has been a strategy adopted by many painters wishing to challenge our expectations of what an image can and should represent. Yves Klein likened monochrome painting to an « open window to freedom. » He worked with a chemist to develop his own particular brand of blue. Made from pure color pigment and a binding medium, he called it « International Klein Blue. » Klein adopted this hue as a means of evoking the immateriality and boundlessness that reflected his own peculiar utopian vision of the world.
« Yves le monochrome, » as Klein called himself, saw the monochrome painting as an « open window to freedom, as the possibility of being immersed in the immeasurable existence of color. » Although he used a range of colors before concentrating on three—blue, gold, and a red he called Monopink—he is most associated with a blue he named International Klein Blue, which he arrived at by working with a chemist to develop a binding medium that could absorb pure color pigment without dimming its brilliant intensity. A student of Rosicrucianism and of Eastern religions, Klein entertained esoteric and spiritual ideas in which blue played a vital role as the color of infinity. Keenly aware that pigment is a substance of the earth, Klein also devised methods to make paintings using the other three elements—air (in the form of wind), water (in the form of rain), and fire.
(Sources: MOMA New York – Monochrome abstraction from Yves Klein. (French, 1928-1962). Blue Monochrome. 1961. Dry pigment in synthetic polymer medium on cotton over plywood, 6′ 4 7/8″ x 55 1/8″ (195.1 x 140 cm). The Sidney and Harriet Janis Collection. © 2007 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris)
