Notes on Art

Yves Klein, Le Vide, Iris Clert Gallery, 1958

photo via

One of the founders of the Nouveaux Realistes, Yves Klein was interested in taking everyday materials and using them as a starting point for his artistic works. He focused on untreated pigments and gold leaf, never using paintbrushes and instead creating with paint rollers, scrapers, and even women’s bodies. Many of his pieces were snapshots of events. This was the artist’s attempt to negate his own fingerprint in the work and to resist the notion of the “artist-genius”.

For Le Vide, the full title being Le specialisation de la sensibilite a l’etat matiere premiere en sensibilite picturale stabilisee, Le Vide (The Specialization of Sensibility in the Raw Material State into Stabilized Pictorial Sensibility, The Void, Klein was interested in creating a space that was as immaterial as possible. He cleared everything but a large cabinet from the room and painted every surface white. The room was lit only by a neon tube light.

In the entrance to the gallery the window was painted the famous Yves Klein Blue, a color the artist developed, with a blue curtain in the lobby and blue cocktails. 3,000 people lined up to see Yves Klein’s empty room.

It was only later that the visitors discovered the blue cocktails would give them blue urine for a week.