Dimanche

The photograph, captioned "Un homme dans l'espace" (A man in open space) depicts the artist leaping from his dealer's second-story window into the void.

Taking the form of a parody of the French newspaper 'Journal du Dimanche', the Sunday edition of France Soir, the book presents Klein's ideas about the Théâtre du Vide (Theatre of the Void) and was the first time the famous photo Un Homme Dans L’Espace-Le Peintre de l’Espace se Jette Dans le Vide!

According to Klein, the intention was to declare the entire 24-hour period an international theatrical happening, 'a holiday, a veritable spectacle of the void, at the culminating point of my theories.

[4] The most famous section of the book was the photographic collage, published with the caption 'The painter of space throws himself into the void!

The leap itself took place at 3 Rue Gentil Bernard, Fontenay-Aux_Roses, in October 1960, using about a dozen Judokas from a Judo School opposite, holding a large tarpaulin to land on.

Yves Klein, quoted underneath the photo 'Man In Space' on the front cover of Dimanche[7] As well as declarations of intent, the book contains a series of theatre pieces, Théâtre du Vide (Theatre of the Void) that prefigure various Fluxus scores of a kind that would later come to be known as happenings.

[8] The book also contained a b/w reproduction of an International Klein Blue monochrome painting, and some sketches of Judo manoeuvres.

Whilst some of the pieces relate to earlier writings and statements by Klein, most were written in a hectic four-day period immediately prior to publication, in a bar with friends.

What these streams had in common was an incentive to discover a mode of creativity that transcended national frontiers, to define its aesthetic criteria, and to disseminate the results.

In this process, Klein figured in the classical role of emissary, heralding a new culture to come- invisible to the eye, yet universally present nonetheless."