“William Klein: Yes” Takes the Artist’s Work Beyond Qui Êtes Vous, Polly Maggoo? and the Pages of Vogue

William Klein, the New York-born, Paris-based multi-hyphenate creative best known as a photographer and film director, is the subject of an extensive monographic exhibition at the ICP. Klein himself titled the show, “Yes,” because, as he told curator David Campany, “I said ‘yes’ to everything. If an opportunity came along and I could do it, even if it was a little outside of my comfort zone, I said ‘yes,’ because you never know what it will lead to.”

It seems fair to say that Klein, now 94, is one of fortune’s favorites. He has consistently seemed to be in the right place at the tight time. He met his late wife, Jeanne, for example, on the day he arrived in Paris.

Organized into nine moments of assent, the new show opens in 1948, when Klein was studying painting (progressing quickly from representation to abstraction) with Fernand Léger, who urged his pupil to think outside of the four walls of galleries and the codified gallery system.

In 1952 an Italian architect discovered Klein’s artworks in an exhibition, and asked him to adapt some of his pieces for use in interiors. In doing so Klein came upon photography, a medium that at first he used to further his exploration of abstraction. Some of the effects he achieved anticipated the glitch aesthetic that has become a relic of the computing age.