Dimanche
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[edit] Dimanche
Dimanche (Sunday), also known as Dimanche - Le Journal d'un Seul Jour (Sunday-The Newspaper for Only One Day) is an Artist's book by the French artist Yves Klein. Published on Sunday 27 November 1960, it was sold on newsstands throughout Paris for one day only, as well as being handed out at a press conference held by Klein at the Galerie Rive Droite at 11.00pm on the same day.
The work was part of the second Festival d’Art d’Avant-Garde at the Palais des Expositions, Porte de Versailles, Paris. Taking the form of a parody of the French newspaper Journal du Dimanche, the Sunday edition of France Soir, the book presents Klein’s ideas about the Théâtre du Vide (Theatre of Emptiness) and was the first time the famous photo ‘Un Homme Dans L’Espace-Le Peintre de l’Espace se Jette Dans le Vide!” (Man In Space! The Painter of Space Throws Himself into The Void!) was published.
According to Klein, the intention was to declare the entire 24 hour period an international theatrical happening, 'a holiday, a veritable spectacle of the void, at the culminating point of my theories.[1]' Merging art and life seamlessly, Klein's theatre would encapsulate each spectator's life as thay lived it on that day.[2] The newspaper sold well.[3]
[edit] The Leap Into The Void
This photomontage, taken by Harry Shunk, was montaged from a number of photos. The leap itself took place at 3 Rue Gentil Bernard, Fontenay-Aux_Roses, in October 1960, using about a dozen Judokas from a Judo School opposite, holding a large tarpaulin.[4] Klein himself was a 4th Dan Judo Master. Shunk then montaged a shot of the empty street onto the photo. In fact there were 3 versions of this photo produced; one with Klein’s 2CV was never used; the one with a train and a cyclist was used for Dimanche; the third with an empty street and without the train was requested by Klein himself the next day to be used in the forthcoming Krefeld Exhibition Catalogue. This strategy of employing two versions of the same montage, effectively bringing attention to the deception was typical of Klein's artistic strategy.
"I am the painter of Space. I am not an abstract painter but, on the contrary, a figurative and realist painter. Let's be honest, in order to paint space, I must put myself on the spot, in space itself." Yves Klein, quoted underneath the photo 'Man In Space' on the front cover of Dimanche[5]
[edit] Théâtre du Vide
As well as declarations of intent, the book contains a series of theatre pieces, Théâtre du Vide (Theatre of Emptiness) that prefigure various Fluxus scores of a kind that would later come to be known as happenings. Pieces contained within the book include;
Le Sommeil (Sleep) The setting is a bedroom. The scene opens with a man asleep in a big bed. The actor must really be sleeping. Each performance lasts about 10 minutes and in silence. There is to be applause at the end.
Renversement (Inversion) For one performance, any play will be presented upside down. All the actors will have their feet on the ceiling and their heads hanging down. This will be possible by trickery. All the furniture will also be on the ceiling, which will really be the floor. A chandelier will therefore levitate in space.
Les Cinq Salles (The Five Rooms) In order to promote the feeling and matter without the intermediary of energy, spectators pass through 5 rooms, their feet bound by ball and chain. 9 monochrome blue paintings of the same format are in the first room; the second room is empty and entirely white; nine monogold paintings of the same format are in the third room; the forth room is empty and dark, almost black; 9 monopink paintings of the same format are in the fifth room.
Du Vertige au Prestige (from Dizziness to Prestige) Having practiced levitation and attempted a kind of purifying sublimation by which he would free himself from the exasperation of the ego, and having created or proposed various aerostatic sculptures that were free from the enslavement of pedestals, Klein presents himself on stage stretched out in space a few meters above the ground for 5 or 10 minutes. The performance takes place without commentary.
These pieces hover between the possible and the imaginary, establishing that the pieces aren’t meant to exist literally, but in the mind of the reader. This prefigures many of the concerns of conceptual art.
Whilst some of the pieces relate to earlier writings and statements by Klein, most were written in a hectic four day period immediately prior to publication, in a bar with friends.[6]
[edit] Influences
The work alludes to the theatre of the absurd, popular in France in the 1950s, a term coined by the critic Martin Esslin. Plays grouped together in this movement include Beckett’s Waiting For Godot (1953) and Genet’s The Blacks (1959)
[edit] Other Artist's Books and Multiples by Yves Klein
Yves: Peintures, 1954
Blue Stamps, 1957
Zones Of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility, 1959-62
Krefeld Exhibition Catalogue, 1961
[edit] References
Yves Klein, Jean-Paul Ledeur, Editions Guy Pieters
Yves Klein, Sidra Stich, Hayward Gallery
Yves Klein, Selected Writings, Tate Gallery
Yves Klein, Berggruen Hollein, Pfeiffer, Hatje Kantz
[edit] Notes
- ^ Quoted from Dimanche
- ^ Yves Klein (1928 - 1962 - Biographical information
- ^ Yves Klein, Hannah Weitemeier, Taschen, p51
- ^ Yves Klein, Sidra Stich, Hayward Gallery, p220
- ^ Quoted in Yves Klein, Sidra Stich, Hayward Gallery, p217
- ^ Yves Klein, Berggruen, Hollein, Pfeiffer, Hatje Kantz
External Links
Yves Klein Archive; [1]
Harry Shunk Obituary; [2]
