We consider the work of Yves Klein as a (one of the last) modern work(s) when we recognize the polarity between color and void of the monochrome close to the theme of the instant. Based on the concept of suddenness of the literary critic Karl-Heinz Bohrer, we identify between the maximum saturation of the blue and the void (emergence and potency of form), experience of the absolute present equivalent to the production of the new. In the 60’s, however, this “coefficient of the new” starts to be increasingly appropriated by the cultural discourse. So Klein attaches himself to the instants that “insisting on abandoning us” (Cioran) through a “monochrome farce”.
Yves Klein; modernism; contemporary art; suddenness; ethics of the blue
