Zone de Sensibilité Picturale Immatérielle
Encyclopedia
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
by the French artist Yves Klein
Yves Klein
Yves Klein was a French artist considered an important figure in post-war European art. He is the leading member of the French artistic movement of Nouveau réalisme founded in 1960 by the art critic Pierre Restany...
. The work involved the sale of documentation of ownership of empty space (the Immaterial Zone), taking the form of a cheque, in exchange for gold
Gold
Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a...
; if the buyer wished, the piece could then be completed in an elaborate ritual in which the buyer would burn the cheque, and Klein would throw half of the gold into the Seine
Seine
The Seine is a -long river and an important commercial waterway within the Paris Basin in the north of France. It rises at Saint-Seine near Dijon in northeastern France in the Langres plateau, flowing through Paris and into the English Channel at Le Havre . It is navigable by ocean-going vessels...
. The ritual would be performed in the presence of an art critic or distinguished dealer, an art museum director and at least two witnesses.
Between the creation of the piece in 1959 and his death on June 6th 1962, eight Zones were sold, of which at least 3 involved the elaborate ritual.
"Klein's receipts verify the existence of an invisible work of art, which prove that a formal sale has taken place. As Klein establishes in his 'Ritual Rules', each buyer has two possibilities; If he pays the amount of gold agreed upon in exchange for a receipt, Klein keeps all of the gold, and the buyer does not really acquire the "authentic immaterial value" of the work. The second possibility is to buy an immaterial zone for gold and then to burn the receipt. Through this act, a perfect, definitive immaterialization is achieved, as well as the absolute inclusion of the buyer in the immaterial.... Klein presents capitalist trading strategies and illuminates his ideas about the indefinable, incalculable value of art."
The piece is often seen as an early example of conceptual art
Conceptual art
Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...
.
Origins of the Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility
Whilst on a trip to CasciaCascia
Cascia is a town and comune of the Italian province of Perugia in a rather remote area of the mountainous southeastern corner of Umbria. It is about 21 km from Norcia on the road to Rieti in the Lazio .-History:...
, Klein had designed an aeromagnetic sculpture, partially as a response to Jean Cocteau's
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...
assertion when visiting his exhibition La forêt d’éponges, June 1959, that it would be even greater if the sponges hovered without supports. Klein's new sculptural idea was to hollow out a sponge, fill it with a hydrogen
Hydrogen
Hydrogen is the chemical element with atomic number 1. It is represented by the symbol H. With an average atomic weight of , hydrogen is the lightest and most abundant chemical element, constituting roughly 75% of the Universe's chemical elemental mass. Stars in the main sequence are mainly...
or helium
Helium
Helium is the chemical element with atomic number 2 and an atomic weight of 4.002602, which is represented by the symbol He. It is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, inert, monatomic gas that heads the noble gas group in the periodic table...
balloon and a piece of metal, and then place it above a concealed electromagnet to regulate the height it would hover at. Whilst this idea was never implemented, Klein applied for- and received- a patent on June 30th 1959, and then wrote enthusiastically about this new idea to his dealer Iris Clert
Iris Clert
Iris Clert was the owner of the Galerie Iris Clert from 1955 to 1971. During its tenure, her gallery became an avant-garde hotspot in the international art scene, particularly to Yves Klein, Jean Tinguely and Arman....
, asking her in particular not to mention the invention to her friend, the artist Takis
Takis
Vassilakis Takis is an artist living in Greece. Adopted by France, his works can be found in many public locations in and around Paris.-Life and work:1940–1950...
, who had also been experimenting with air sculptures. This led to a serious argument with Clert, who tended to side with Takis, as well as re-opening a previous feud with Jean Tinguely
Jean Tinguely
Jean Tinguely was a Swiss painter and sculptor. He is best known for his sculptural machines or kinetic art, in the Dada tradition; known officially as metamechanics...
.
"Their disagreement was so strong that Klein had removed all of his art from Clert's gallery in August 1959 and had told her assistant to inform any interested buyers that his paintings were all invisible and that if a buyer wanted one, it would suffice to write a check. He further specified that the check had to be very visible."
Clert then told this anecdote to a number of visitors to her gallery, one of whom, Peppino Palazzoli, an Italian gallerist, expressed an interest in buying an invisible artwork from Klein; in an attempt to repair the friendship, Clert informed Klein of the sale. She also recommended that Klein design a 'proper receipt'. Palazzoli became the official owner of the first Zone on November 18th that year, having bought the work for 20 grams of gold, valued at $466.20 as of November 1, 2008 The reunion with Clert was to prove short-lived, however. By the end of 1959, he would sever his affiliation with her gallery, and the Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility would be their last collaboration. His next exhibition, the notorious Anthropométries de l'epoque bleue, March 1960, (featuring models covered in blue paint pressing themselves on to canvases in front of an invited audience of notables) would be held in the considerably more upmarket Galerie Internationale d'Art Contemporain, on the Rive Droite
Rive Droite
La Rive Droite is most associated with the river Seine in central Paris. Here the river flows roughly westwards, cutting the city into two: looking downstream, the northern bank is to the right, and the southern bank is to the left....
.
The artist's book and Klein's use of gold
The book took the form of a parody of a banker's chequebook. Klein printed eight books of these receipts of which five survive- apart from the first book (which contained 31 unnumbered checks for an unspecified amount of gold), each book contains 10 numbered receipts for a set value of gold; series one cheques cost 20 grams of gold, series four cost 160 grams. The value of the seventh book's cheques was listed in the Antagonismes Exhibition, Paris 1960, at 1,280 grams.Any gold that wasn't thrown into the Seine ended up in Klein's concurrent series of Monogolds; large scale works made of gold leaf. He had first come across the material's use in art whilst working in a framing workshop, Robert Savage's, in London 1949-50; he was also to encounter it used in golden Buddha
Buddha
In Buddhism, buddhahood is the state of perfect enlightenment attained by a buddha .In Buddhism, the term buddha usually refers to one who has become enlightened...
s and screens whilst visiting Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
. Curiously, these encounters led Klein to associate the precious metal with immateriality;
"And the gold, it was something! These leaves that literally fluttered with the least current of air on the flat cushion that one held in one hand, while the other hand caught them in the wind with a knife.... What a material!
The illumination of matter in its deep physical quality, I came to embrace it during that year at the 'Savage' frame shop." Klein
The Ritual
The use of ritual in Klein's work is a theme running through his work, from his exhibition Le Vide (The Void) 1958, in which he exhibited invisible works at Clert's gallery flanked by Republican Guards, to his elaborately planned wedding ceremony in 1962 and his votive offering to Saint Rita of CasciaRita of Cascia
Saint Rita of Cascia is an Italian Augustinian saint.-Early life:St. Rita was born at Roccaporena near Spoleto, Umbria, Italy....
(see http://www.yveskleinarchives.org/documents/bio_html/1961_B_us.html). Klein was fascinated by Catholicism
Catholicism
Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole....
& Buddhism
Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...
, as well as being an enthusiastic member of the archaic group the Knights of the Order of Saint Sebastian.
The obsession with the void, or nothingness, also runs throughout his work, with Le Vide (The Void) being the most famous example; for his second major exhibition at Iris Clert's, he emptied the entire gallery, painted it white (using his patented medium) and then persuaded the French government to send Republican Guards to stand outside as sentries, at the end of a hallway painted ultramarine
International Klein Blue
International Klein Blue is a deep blue hue first mixed by the French artist Yves Klein. IKB's visual impact comes from its heavy reliance on Ultramarine, as well as Klein's often thick and textured application of paint to canvas.- History :...
, covered with blue curtains to ensure there would be no way of anticipating the gallery's contents. Anyone who didn't have an invitation was charged 1,500 frs. entrance fee. It was estimated that between 2,500 and 3,000 people turned up for the opening, and Clert decided to prolong the exhibition for an extra week to accommodate the 'several hundred' visitors each day.
“Having rejected nothingness, I discovered the void. The meaning of the immaterial pictorial zones, extracted from the depth of the void which by that time was of a very material order. Finding it unacceptable to sell these immaterial zones for money, I insisted in exchange for the highest quality of the immaterial, the highest quality of material payment – a bar of pure gold. Incredible as it may seem, I have actually sold a number of these pictorial immaterial states . . . Painting no longer appeared to me to be functionally related to the gaze, since during the blue monochrome period of 1957 I became aware of what I called the pictorial sensibility. This pictorial sensibility exists beyond our being and yet belongs in our sphere. We hold no right of possession over life itself. It is only by the intermediary of our taking possession of sensibility that we are able to purchase life. Sensibility enables us to pursue life to the level of its base material manifestations, in the exchange and barter that are the universe of space, the immense totality of nature.” Yves Klein, from the Chelsea Hotel Manifesto, 1961
Reception of the Work
The French press delighted in calling the event 'a scandal' (Klein Sells Wind!), but others were more impressed;Various members of the group present to watch Michael Blankfort's ritual transaction, for instance, on February 10th 1962, concurred that the event was 'extremely awe-inspiring', ending with the noonday chimes ringing out from churches all around Paris. Blankfort, a Hollywood writer, wrote later of having "no other experience in art equal to the depth of feeling of [the sale ceremony]. It evoked in me a shock of self-recognition and an explosion of awareness of time and space."
It has been suggested that the work is a response to Walter Benjamin's
Walter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German-Jewish intellectual, who functioned variously as a literary critic, philosopher, sociologist, translator, radio broadcaster and essayist...
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
"The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" is a 1936 essay by German cultural critic Walter Benjamin, which has been influential across the humanities, and especially in the fields of cultural studies, media theory, architectural theory and art history...
, in which he wrote “The unique value of the ‘authentic’ work of art has its basis in ritual, the location of its original use value.” If so, the Zones directly refute Benjamin's central argument, that modern mass production can finally "emancipate the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual".
"Believe me, one is not robbed when one buys such paintings; it is I who am always robbed because I accept money." Yves Klein