There will be no naked women rolling in searingly blue paint at Blenheim Palace this summer, but the stupendously grand rooms will hold some of the most famous paintings by the French artist Yves Klein – the Anthropometry series created at live events for which he used volunteers as human paint brushes.
More than half a century after his death in 1962, aged just 34, his trademark intense ultramarine blue – a pigment he saw as bridging the gap between the real world and the sublime through pure colour – is still officially known as International Klein Blue.
This summer the palace will house the most comprehensive UK exhibition of Klein’s work, in what would have been his 90th year. It will include paintings and installation pieces, and classically inspired sculptures such as a version of the Venus de Milo, challenging the antique marbles filling many of the state rooms.
“His attitude to life was that everything was possible as long as you set your mind to it – a very positive outlook on the world which is perhaps something we need more than ever now,” said the curator Michael Frahm. “He died too young, but he was hugely hard working, and his work remains highly influential, one of the most original and influential artists of the 20th century.”
Frahm is the director of the Blenheim Art Foundation, founded in 2014 by Lord Edward Spencer-Churchill to bring annual exhibitions of contemporary art into the bewilderingly grand formal rooms of his family home. The series has formerly featured living artists and launched with a major exhibition from Ai Weiwei. The Chinese artist was then under house arrest in Beijing but toured the the space to plan the installation through a specially created 3D computer model. The exhibition proved so popular its run had to be extended twice.
The 18th-century Oxfordshire palace, designed by Sir John Vanbrugh and set in a landscape designed by the famed gardener Capability Brown, has been a Unesco World Heritage site since 1987. Blenheim was conceived as a gift from the grateful nation to the first Duke of Marlborough for his victories in war, but as the costs escalated dizzyingly funds stopped with £220,000 spent and the 28,330-sq-metre (seven-acre) house only half completed. It was finished years later when his widow, the formidable Sarah Churchill, sacked the architect and insisted on lower wages and cheaper materials.
- Yves Klein at Blenheim Palace, 18 July – 7 October 2018.
