In order to approach the work of Yves Klein, the author recalls the arguments of Theodor Adorno in regard to the music of Richard Wagner, presented in two different texts - the first written in 1937-1938, under the experience of fascism, and the other in 1963, with a "distance" of 30 years. In the first text, Adorno highlighted, in the work of Wagner, the aspects that betrayed the birth of fascism. In the second one he recognized that, along with the new historical moment, other layers emerged in Wagner's work; it had changed, and Adorno's position toward it became "ambivalent". Starting with a parallelism with Wagner, Bois reexamines the work of Yves Klein, trying to reveal, in his use of staging and artifice, beyond the mere acceptance of the expedients of the culture industry, a spectacularization of spectacle itself, that ends up by deflating it.
Yves Klein; Theodor Adorno; Richard Wagner; culture industry; spectacle