A New Idea isn’t Enough

Last year, my family and I went to the MoMA in New York. Beside well-known stunners like Starry Night – and works by Manet and Cezanne, there is Blue Monochrome, 1961 by Yves Klein. It literally is a single color on a 6.5 foot by 4.5 foot canvas. That’s it. 

If you’ve ever looked at a piece of modern art and thought: “I could have done that!”. This would be one of those pieces. I know I certainly have.

But could I have done it? Artistic ideas, like business ideas, aren’t enough. I mean, how many of us have seen a simple business idea (delivery apps!) and thought, well, “I could have done that”?

So, why is Blue Monochrome in the MoMA and my non-existent work isn’t?

A New Perspective. Often we look back on a work and it fits a gap in our collective thinking that is obvious in retrospect. But of course taking that leap into the gap requires stepping back and surveying the broader context. That is something few people do, and when they do spot those gaps, it matters.

Klein was reacting in part to complexity – so revert to simplicity. He did make a symphony that consisted of 20 minutes of a single note, after all. That doesn’t mean I want to listen to that music. But it is a statement that can force the listener or viewer to think differently – which is what Blue Monochrome can do.

Execution: It is true that the painting is a single color. But what a color. It is vivid and piercing. Some call it ultramarine, and ultra is the right descriptor. In person, you sink into the depth of it. It evolved from an earlier work when he claimed the sky itself as his own piece of art. The color has become so iconic that it’s called International Klein Blue and is trademarked.

His selection of the blue was no accident, and grew out of experiments with other colors like pink and gold. So, the curating of the color among all other colors was vital to its success. And color isn’t the only thing. He executed the piece with a texture to it, as the pigment itself is suspended in a resin, giving it a rough depth.

Similarly, a business idea is just an idea without execution. Experimenting, iterating, and delivering matters.

Marketed: If no one cared about the piece, would it have made it to the MoMA? Of course not. Klein integrated the paintings into larger performance pieces. His exhibitions were performances themselves. And they were an incredible display of pricing wizardry – pricing nearly identical pieces differently, forcing a viewer to think about the value they saw in the piece. Plus, as part of a broader movement he both rode and advanced a movement that helped secure his place.

So: could we have done it? There’s so much more to translating an idea into a reality that it leaves me admiring (and aspiring to) creators even more.