Publisher's Synopsis
While surveying the artist's life, Banai establishes that Klein's brilliance was, above all, performative, revealing that he created and inhabited myriad public identities: bourgeois, judo expert, painter, avant-garde artist, collaborator, politician, fascist, and showman, among others. With each persona, Banai shows, Klein invented new ways to communicate his paradoxical message of spiritual enlightenment and Dada iconoclasm to a rapt and unsuspecting audience. Illuminating the many facets of Klein's influential artistic career, Yves Klein is an invaluable introduction to the inventor of the inimitable International Klein Blue.