Exhibition of the week Yves Klein
Blenheim Palace, Woodstock, Oxfordshire (01993-810530, blenheimpalace.com). Until 7 October
It was built by Queen Anne as a gift to the Duke of Marlborough following his victory against the French in 1704. It was the birthplace of Winston Churchill. And earlier this summer, it was the location for a banquet held in honour of Donald Trump. “Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire has many claims to fame,” said Alastair Smart in the Daily Mail. And now, unlikely as it sounds, it has become the venue for a major exhibition dedicated to the visionary French conceptual artist Yves Klein (1928-62).
Klein died at the tender age of 34, but after the Second World War he took painting in a “bold new direction”: he “dispensed with brushes”, and used everything from sponges and blowtorches to – controversially – women’s bodies to create his work. His “greatest feat”, however, was the invention of a new type of blue hue, now universally known as International Klein Blue (IKB) – a mesmerising colour that became his trademark, characterising nearly all his paintings, sculptures and installations. This show is the most comprehensive survey of his career in the UK to date; about 50 of his works are “strategically” dotted around the palace and its grounds to dazzling effect. Seeing Klein’s outlandish “ultramarine objects” set against Blenheim’s “sober” interiors is an odd proposition, but there are “delights around every corner”. The show begins in ravishing style, said Adrian Searle in The Guardian. The first thing we see is a “huge rectangle of ultramarine pigment” laid out on the floor of the entrance hall like a “bottomless visual pool for the eye”. Thereafter, alas, it goes rapidly downhill. Everywhere you look, Klein’s blue objects – lifecasts, copies of the Venus de Milo, even paint rollers – are juxtaposed with Blenheim’s fusty furnishings: blue spheres “dangle among the chandeliers”; IKB canvases offset old family portraits. This has the surprise of novelty at first, but in no time becomes tediously repetitive. Nor does it say anything new about Klein’s art. This show has “no real purpose except to decorate the space”.
Still, there are points to savour, said Daisy Dunn in The Spectator. A series of Klein’s “cheerful” coloured plates look especially fine against displays of Meissen in the palace’s china cabinets, and there’s a gallery containing some intriguing explanations of his working methods, including “wonderful photographs of him at work and play”. But the truth is that Klein was an artist primarily interested in emptiness: he once staged an exhibition containing nothing but “white walls and an empty cabinet”. Bleinheim’s ancestral clutter is thus anathema to his vision. Ultimately, I can’t think of a “less appropriate” place to exhibit his work.