The difficult work I chose to analyze is postmodernist Yves Klein's "Obsession de la levitation (Le Saut dans le vide)." Created in 1960, this black and white photograph depicts a man falling intentionally out of a window on the second floor of a house-like building along a fragmented paved road. While this piece didn't shock me, or make me uncomfortable like the 3D installation piece with the feathery bird people and the little video in the wall of the mouth filled with rocks. No one, besides myself, seemed particularly struck by the relatively small black and white photograph displayed in the corner of the room, and neither was I at first. What caught my attention was the title, being in french it literally translates to “Obsession With Levitation (Leap into the Void).” After reading the title, the picture seemed much more emotive, as if the man leaping from the window was actually going to levitate a millisecond after the photograph was taken. Before reading the title, I thought it seemed odd that he was attempting to commit suicide at such a low height, but I now realize that there is a very different type of desperate facial expression shown. The jumper’s face says suspense, of course, but it also says desperation and hope, as if Peter Pan had sprinkled him with a bit of pixie dust and he so badly wanted to believe that he could fly. I look at this photograph and I see a narrative of a man’s whole life, leading up to this very fraction of a second that Klein has captured. I imagine a whole lifetime of dreams of levitation, years of experimentation and mockery all leading up to the moment where the man becomes perfectly horizontal in the air. Will he stay, will he simply fall to the ground and be badly injured in mind and body.
The photograph appears to be taken in one-point perspective, which I think is very important to the composition. While it doesn’t quite lead the the viewer’s eye in the direction of the man, it allows the fence and the train in the background to lie exactly horizontal. This helps build the suspense while the viewer imagines the last few milliseconds before he too becomes horizontal. At the same time, the lines created by the perspective create a sort of tension. Since the viewer’s eye isn’t lead directly to the obvious subject matter, it leaves us waiting and wondering about the fencepost and gate that the lines seem to point toward causing us to take a closer look. There are two men pictured here, and one of them is quite obviously the subject matter, but I think the other is as important to the composition as the jumper is to the subject. The biker really lends a sense of dynamic balance to the picture since, as humans, we look first for other humans in a situation. The fact that they are both moving quickly in different directions gives the photograph a sense of spontaneity, having caught the picture before the composition collapses. I think the artist was really trying to convey a sense of ironically hopeful desperation. The grayscale effect works well to create an intentional weight to the picture, while the crumbling pavement and dirty brick buildings give it a really thick visual texture. These things in conjunction with the biker riding obliviously away in the background and the direction of the perspective lines creates a very intentional distraction from the focal point. It is as if Klein hoped to create this every day situation in which one man is having a very extraordinary moment.
