The digital life of paintings

by on January 24, 2013 in Aesthetics, week 2

The French artist Yves Klein 1928-1962 produced a set of monochrome paintings – a photo of one of them is shown on the left (downloaded from the Tate website) and is entitled IKB 79 1959

Following Amy’s post ‘What is real‘, I thought I would like to ask a number of related questions. Some of these have been on my mind since the first IDEL module and are also part of my dissertation considerations.

  1. Can we have an aesthetic experience from this image?
  2. How does the experience differ from seeing the painting in a gallery, or indeed on other digital devices (phone, PC, tablet…)

The Tate website explains:

‘The letters IKB stand for International Klein Blue, a distinctive ultramarine which Klein registered as a trademark colour in 1957. He considered that this colour had a quality close to pure space and he associated it with immaterial values beyond what can be seen or touched.’

This digital image also represents the immaterial. But a different kind of immaterial. Can the immaterial of the internet help us understand different interpretations of ‘immaterial’?

I am currently reading around the topic of Deleuze’s ‘Rhizome‘ and hope to find more theoretical support.

 

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