Exhibition Review: William Klein: YES
William Klein, Candy Store, Amsterdam Avenue, New York, 1955. © William Klein, Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery
Written by Nikkala Kovacevic
Copy Edited by Parker Renick
Photo Edited by Lucia Luzzani
William Klein is not bound by genre. In fact, few artists have worn as many hats and achieved such success in each as the New York native has. With a career spanning decades, Klein has made waves in the worlds of painting, avant-garde and fashion photography, documentary and fiction film, to name a few. Yet, despite his wide range of artistic pursuits, there is still an unmistakably deliberate composition he imbues in each of his works that makes it easy to say, “That’s a Klein.” Now, for the first time in decades, the International Center of Photography will be showcasing a career-spanning retrospective of Klein’s work with over 300 works on display, acting as a testament to the true variety of his impact.
William Klein, Nina and Simone, Piazza di Spagna, Rome, 1960. © William Klein, Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery
William Klein, Independence Day Parade, Dakar, 1963. © William Klein, Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery
Finding himself in Europe for the first time after serving in WWII, Klein began his career as a painter under the guidance of renowned cubist Fernand Léger. Klein once lamented that his former instructor first pushed him to break out of his stifling mindset of popular success, telling him in true modernist fashion: “Fuck the galleries. Fuck the collectors. This is not your problem. Your problem is to be part of the city.” As a devoted painter, Klein found his place in the photography world by accident. After designing and painting a set of rotating room dividers for an architect, Klein began photographing the panels while his wife spun them, capturing the abstract blurs of movement, igniting a career-long obsession with representing the liveliness of a perpetually moving reality in a single still image.
Klein’s roots were always in the abstract image, a style which he constantly found himself coming back to. As can be seen in Independence Day Parade, Dakar, (1963), Klein’s lack of emphasis on focus or subjectivity forces the viewer to confront the bold coloration and movement of the photo. These forceful qualities imbue the piece with the mood and the urgency of the moment instead of its subject. Even in his more realist works, primarily capturing strangers at random on the street, Klein’s work doesn’t feel altogether documentarian.
William Klein, Karl Lagerfeld and Klein, 2006. © William Klein, Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery
Klein’s street photography feels more like a still from a movie, as both the people and the camera feel as though they are moving, colliding into one another to merge both spectator and subject. In street work like Candy Store, Amsterdam Avenue, New York, (1955) and Nina and Simone, Piazza di Spagna, Rome, (1960), Klein affords his subjects the same power as being actors in his movie, at once capturing reality while simultaneously distorting it, so as to bring to light a perspective hidden to the human eye, only available to the camera. Klein’s transition into cinema was a fluid one, producing a multitude of documentaries and three feature films. In many ways, his style of photography was closer to that of a filmmaker, being why his transition into film seemed to be a perfect fit in his already burgeoning artistic repertoire.
William Klein, Auto-Portrait, 1993. © William Klein, Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery
Unlike many artists, William Klein often crossed the boundaries between commercial, editorial, and avant-garde. His work with Vogue and subsequent critical pieces of the fashion industry reflect Klein’s devotion to capturing reality through his own distorted lens. While his pieces often tell the story of another individual or moment in time, they are also transformed by the time and place of his artistic progression. His movement from abstraction to realism to editorial and back to abstraction depict the movement of a man through time, each subject displayed through Klein’s timeless perspective.
William Klein: YES: Photographs, Paintings, Films, 1948–2013 will be on view at ICP, at 79 Essex Street, New York, from June 3 through September 12, 2022.
