In the year 1947 on a beach, under the blue, cloudless sky of the French Riviera in Nice, three friends divided the world between themselves: Arman took the Earth with its riches, Claude Pascal took the air and Yves Klein took the sky. They have remained faithful to this division: Arman in art, Pascal in poetry. Klein created IKB - International Klein Blue - his own blue. Blue is the expression of Klein's deep metaphysical beliefs. However, it was not the type of metaphysics that separates life from the World and detaches the body from the spirit �C on the contrary �C it allows one to feel them.
The three friends were united by one more thing �C their inclination for judo. Klein reached the highest possible level of mastery for a European in this sport, studying it also in Japan . In the art of the Far East, e.g. in calligraphy, one can distinguish two levels (phases, or planes): preparation, which consists of summoning one's inner strengths, and the performing gesture. In the art of the West, this division would correspond to two completely different or even contrasting tendencies �C the expressionist tendency and the conceptual tendency. Klein united them by eliminating direct, ��manual' labour of the artist from the process of creating a work of art (a picture).
Lee Wen pays special attention to this aspect of Klein's art. At the same time, manual skills are basic for Western art, especially in the topic of nude, in which the concept of classical beauty used to materialize. In Klein's art, the body functions by itself, body as body, and not only as a picture and representation. In relation to visual forms, it functions as the causative agent, replacing the artist, who takes the conceptual role.
The title: ��Anthropometries' indicates a measuring unit for this kind of art. It is a human being �C its physical and mental condition, which allows joining the visual form, the expression of gesture and its inner, conceptual basis. Klein's art combines in itself the East and the West and that may be why it still is a source of inspiration.
��Anthropometries' have features of a so-called ��good gesture'. The concept of ��good gesture' in art was described by Brian O'Doherty in his book �C ��Inside the white cube�� with reference to the choices that Duchamp made when arranging the space of International Surrealist Exhibition in Galerie Beaux �C Arts in Paris in 1938. It especially referred to ��1200 Coal Bags'. Duchamp ��took what nobody wanted' �C the ceiling, which, in the context of the modernist ��white cube', means paying attention to the whole of space as the space of a work of art. O'Doherty says that a ��good gesture' is like an invention which isfollowed by many different applications. It also has meta-character for other gestures �C it constitutes their basis which is so obvious and natural that in subsequent realizations it is taken ��on faith' and, in this way, ��forgotten'.
While re-enacting Klein's gesture, Lee Wen introduces a series of changes in it. As a performer, Lee Wen carries out the gestures of pictorial expression by himself; he uses the yellow colour which results from the context of his own cultural specificity; Klein's monochromatic painting was accompanied by monotone music (the orchestra plays one note), while here a traditional Chinese pentatonic (five-tone) scale is used; the artist Jiang Jing decided to perform in a costume, because she found nudity to be a clich�� �C too direct a link to models in ��Anthropometries'.
In his text, Lee Wen asked if it is possible to re-enact Klein's gesture in the Asian context. It is not about the conformity with the original idea. The frames of ��Anthropometries' allow for the specific Asian character, which becomes visible in, e.g. the attitude to body in art, in public space. It seems, though, that an especially interesting element is the way in which the issue of expression of pictorial gesture, so important in the art of Asia , is artistically solved. The confrontation of pictorial gestures of the East and the West still seems to be an inexhaustible topic in art.
Dr. Lukasz Guzek
