The essay analyzes the final series of work by the French postmodern artist Yves Klein. The Fire paintings were created in 1961-1962 during a performance at the research laboratory of the National Gaswork of France, located outside Paris. Klein used a two-meter-long gas pipe to spray fire on wet canvas and damped Swedish cardboard to create an abstract, minimalistic body of work. The founder of Nouveau Réalisme Klein took traces of fire through a canvas and created a series including more than 150 oeuvres. In this research, semiotic philosopher Charles Sanders Pierce's method has been applied to analyze 23 selected artworks that devise the incarnation of the myth through five different analysis theories: fire, the creation, universe, man, and passion. Through layers of conceptual ideas, the research shows that Klein's body of work is more mystical than rational, just like the artist's personality. The analyst concludes that the 23 selected Fire paintings are constructed with ambiguous philosophical questions about existence and invoke our imagination with inspiration from alchemy. As in the Nouveau Réalisme manifesto, the essence of the paintings was to create traces of life. The research substantiates that the conceptual series of oeuvre represents the creation of life and universe, as the end of our physical life marks the beginning of our reincarnation. The inspiration for the Fire paintings came from Catholicism, Rosicrusian Order, spiritualism, judo, alchemy, and contemporary historical situations and science during 1950-1960.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-527772 |
| Date | January 2021 |
| Creators | Enhörning, Louise |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Konstvetenskapliga institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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