Odd this day

3 min readDec 7, 2022

63 years ago today, artist Yves Klein sold antiques dealer Jacques Kugel an artwork — which seems like an unremarkable anniversary, but for the fact that the art was invisible, and the buyer was supposed to burn the receipt.

Yves Klein’s receipt for Jacques Kugel. Black writing on a cream piece of paper, designed to look like a banker’s cheque, reads: “Reçu Vongt Grammes d’Or Fin contre une Zone de Sensibilité Picturale Immatérielle”. It is signed by Klein and dated Paris le 7–12 1959

Klein, you see, was selling “Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility” — empty space in exchange for 20 grams of gold. Then, if the buyer agreed to burn the certificate, Klein chucked half the gold in the Seine.

Obviously.

Yves Klein and Dino Buzzati during the ritual of the transfer on the banks of the seine in Paris on January 26, 1962. Image shows two men in suits standing by the river, one throwing gold leaf from a box into the river, the other holding a burning receipt

This work followed his famous La spécialisation de la sensibilité à l’état matière première en sensibilité picturale stabilisée, Le Vide (The Specialization of Sensibility in the Raw Material State into Stabilized Pictorial Sensibility, The Void).

Yves Klein work, The Void — an empty cabinet in an otherwise empty room, whose walls have all been painted white

This was a room which had been entirely emptied, except for an empty cabinet, and painted completely white, saving himself from creating actual work by instead creating the idea of it in the minds of the viewers…

With this attempt I wished to create, establish, and present to the public a sensible pictorial state within the confines of an picture gallery. In other words, I sought to create an ambience, a pictorial climate that is invisible but present, in the spirit of what Delacroix referred to in his journal as the indefinable, which he considered to be the very essence of painting.

…who came in droves.

It opened on his 30th birthday at a gallery whose windows had been painted International Klein Blue, and whose entrance had been specially draped with blue curtains. At least 3,000 people turned up, “requiring 3 wagons of police to control the mob”.

Outside the Iris Clert Gallery the night the Void opened. Three men stand outside a doorway draped in huge blue curtains. To their left, we can see the windows have been painted blue

One account of the night says

A blue drink (a combination of gin, Cointreau, and methylene blue) was served to the 3,500 attendees, who apparently ended up urinating blue the next day (much to the artist’s delight)

(A couple of years later, a friend of Klein’s created Le Plein — The Full-Up — by filling the same room with so much rubbish that the work could only be seen through the window.)

The Iris Clert Gallery, 1960, with the room full floor-to-ceiling of old bicyles, boxes of records and other junk

The most famous manifestation of Klein’s obsession with voids is probably still his leap into it:

Leap into the Void, Yves Klein — a man apparently plunging towards a Parisian pavement from the first floor of a building (actually a composite of the street and Klein falling. In the original shot of him falling, he landed in a tarpaulin held by friends.)

…but he sold at least seven Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility receipts, most of which were burnt as planned. According to Klein, this “rebalanced the natural order” between buyer and seller. One survived, though, and (well, of course) sold for €850,000 in April.

If all this sounds a bit familiar, the guy who sold it said

The latter work foreshadows the NFT phenomenon. It’s a revolution

…apparently forgetting that the receipt actually exists.

Still, feel free to download any of he pictures in this thread. I will only charge you £1,000 each for the privilege.

Odd this day

Written by Coates

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