Leap Into the Void | All Works | The MFAH Collections

Description

On October 19, 1960,
photographers Harry Shunk and Jonas Kender were employed by Yves Klein to
document Klein’s serene leap heavenward from the second story of this otherwise
banal Parisian street. Later they produced a photomontage by collaging together
a photograph of the street with the image of Klein leaping off the roof on to a
ready tarpaulin.

Klein self-published the image in a four-page
broadsheet, Dimanche, under the
caption: Un homme dans l’espace! Le
peintre de l’espace se jette dans le vide (A man in space! The painter of space
throws himself into the void). He then distributed the paper to newsstands
across Paris, where it was sold next to the real Dimanche on November 27, 1960. 

This distribution furthered the impression that
the leap actually took place. The circuitous dialogue between media
constraints, artistic intent, and art objecthood provoked by this work made the
photograph iconic and incredibly influential for performance based artists in
the following decades.