0143NOTAphrodite

Yves Klein, "The Blue Venus," 1962, blued mold of the Aphrodite of Cnidos attributed to Praxiteles

Klein (1928 - 1962) based his blue Venus on the cast of the torso from Praxiteles' Aphrodite of Cnidos, Louvre inv. no. Ma 2184, not the Venus de Milo that its amputations suggest. The choice of the Cnidian Aphrodite suggests, perhaps, that Klein is in pursuit of the origins of the type, Praxitiles having been the first to sculpt the nude Aphrodite and antecedant to most subsequent Aphrodites.

But this sculptural work i primarily about color. The sculpture is imbued with Klein's "signature" color, which he called "International Klein Blue" or "I.K.B." and patented in 1961. (See the ARTSY site for more.)

The sculpture is used in the cover art of C. Martindale and R.F. Thomas, edd. Classics and the Uses of Classical Reception (Blackwell 2006), and discussed in the article "Reception and Ancient Art: the case of the Venus de Milo" by Elizabeth Prettejohn, p. 241.

Klein also did the same bluing with the Nike of Samothrace and other classical sculptures.