Zone de Sensibilité Picturale Immatérielle
The work involved the sale of documentation of ownership of empty space (the Immaterial Zone), taking the form of a receipt, in exchange for gold; if the buyer wished, the piece could then be completed in an elaborate ritual in which the buyer would burn the receipt, and Klein would throw half of the gold into the Seine.
[4][5] Whilst on a trip to Cascia, Klein had designed an aeromagnetic sculpture, partially as a response to Jean Cocteau's assertion when visiting his exhibition La forêt d’éponges, June 1959, that it would be even greater if the sponges hovered without supports.
[6] Klein's new sculptural idea was to hollow out a sponge, fill it with a hydrogen or helium balloon and a piece of metal, and then place it above a concealed electromagnet to regulate the height at which it would hover.
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.
Klein was fascinated by Catholicism and Buddhism, as well as being an enthusiastic member of the archaic group the Knights of the Order of Saint Sebastian.
[12] 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, covered with blue curtains to ensure there would be no way of anticipating the gallery's contents.
[13] It was estimated that between 2,500 and 3,000 people turned up for the opening,[14] and Clert decided to prolong the exhibition for an extra week to accommodate the 'several hundred' visitors each day.
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.
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[16] The French press delighted in calling the event 'a scandal' (Klein Sells Wind!
), but others were more impressed;[1] Various members of the group present to watch Michael Blankfort's ritual transaction, for instance, on 10 February 1962, concurred that the event was 'extremely awe-inspiring',[1] ending with the noonday chimes ringing out from churches all around Paris.
