PaperCity Magazine

PaperCity Houston November 2022

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(Continued from page 36) ROBERTO MAROSSI 42 A mong the talismanic and touchstone artists of The Menil Collection is Yves Klein (1928 – 1962). This provocative conceptualist was both an avowed minimalist who once staged a show in an empty room and called it "The Void" and an early proponent of the most avant-garde, brow-raising performance art, which contemporary artists still embrace as example. While The Menil Collection celebrates 35 years this fall with a grand Cirque Surréaliste-themed gala on Saturday, December 3, this year also signals the 60th anniversary of Klein's passing — an event marked by an important new international design collaboration. Forty years after Dominique de Menil's groundbreaking "Yves Klein, 1928 - 1962: A Retrospective," first staged in 1982 at Rice University (five years before the Menil opened), the stars have aligned again. French design house Pierre Frey collaborates with the Yves Klein Archives to produce two collections: Les Anthropométries and Les Peintures de Feu, which are deployed throughout a series of wallpaper and carpet designs. The wallpapers, Ant 82 and Ant 125, bear striking cerulean International Klein Blue (IKB) figuration from the artist's iconic circa-1960 performances, where naked models became paintbrushes, loaded up with blue pigment and smeared across the awaiting canvas to compose a painting emboldened by action. Beyond the swaths of blue nudes, which also make it onto an Ant 125 carpet, a series of Fire Paintings in varying shades of blue, pink, and gold, comprises the rug collection. Spun from wool and silk, these textiles offer a nod to the artist's exploration of the properties of fire upon cardboard sprayed with water, a series he began in 1961 in the test center of France's national gas company in La Plaine Saint- Denis. Yves Klein X Pierre Frey, to the trade at Culp Associates, Decorative Center Houston, 5120 Woodway Dr. Clockwise from top: Yves Klein X Pierre Frey Ant 125 wallpaper. Yves Klein's Requiem (RE 20), 1960, at The Menil Collection. The artist with his work Grande Anthropophagie bleue – Hommage à Tennessee Williams (Ant 76) at the Galerie Rive Droite, Paris, 1960. Yves Klein X Pierre Frey Ant 82 wallpaper. Yves Klein X Pierre Frey Ant 125 rug. © REBECKA OFTEDAL SYLVIE BECQUET © REBECKA OFTEDAL. ARTIST PORTRAIT ON RIGHT © THE ESTATE OF YVES KLEIN C/O ADAGP PARIS, 2019 /VEGAP MADRID, 2019. © PHOTO PIERRE DESCARGUES. THE MENIL COLLECTION. © SUCCESSION YVES KLEIN C/O ADAGP, PARIS / ARS, NYC. PHOTO HICKEY-ROBERTSON, HOUSTON

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