Courtesy Archives Yves Klein, DR, ADAGP, Paris
Yves Klein, "Le Vide," Galerie Iris Clert, Paris, 1958
© Dominique Uldry, ADAGP, Paris
Maria Eichhorn, "Money at the Kunsthalle Bern," Kunsthalle Bern, 2000. Pictured: The Skylight Room
All in all, the evening was a roaring success, barring the authorities’ last-minute decision not to allow the illumination of the Place de la Concorde obelisk in Yves Klein blue. And the "Void Show," as the exhibition came to be known, saw its run, originally scheduled for just eight days, extended for a week due to its popularity, with over 200 visitors daily.
For a 1960 retrospective of his work at the Haus Lange in Krefeld, Germany, Klein “re-created” the Iris Clert show by painting one room white, crudely lighting it with neon tubes, and displaying absolutely nothing in it. The room still exists as he left it.
2. Art & Language: The Air Conditioning Show, The Visual Arts Gallery, New York, 1972
Contrary to what one might at first think, the title of this show does not say it all. The air conditioning in question was not intended to produce “theatrical” gusts of air or extremes of heat or cold that might arouse an emotional response in the visitor, but rather to keep the gallery at a steady temperature that would be as unremarkable, unnoticeable, and ordinary as possible. The gallery space was to be entirely neutral and undistinguished. An act of resistance from within, the show was conceived as a subversive critique of the art-exhibition “system” and all its economic, social, and cultural implications; an occupation of the gallery space that deliberately flouted its rules, the exhibition suggested that one should perhaps look elsewhere for artistic production. First proposed as an idea in 1966 by Britons Terry Atkinson and Michael Baldwin — founding members of the conceptual-art group Art & Language — at a time when air conditioning was a rarity in England, the “Air Conditioning Show” was not realized until six years later, and only in New York, where it had a monthlong run.
3. Robert Irwin: Experimental Situation, Ace Gallery, Los Angeles, 1970
In the 1950s, Robert Irwin produced paintings that are generally classed as Abstract Expressionist, but over the following years his artistic production became increasingly radical and in 1972 he abandoned painting entirely. This show, from 1970, arguably hailed the turning point in his career. As the exhibition invitation explained, “The gallery space will be empty for a period of 1 month (October), for Robert Irwin to visit the space daily to conceive the different possibilities of artworks for the space.” Visitors were allowed in during this time, and, according to the gallery’s director, Douglas Christmas, many made the mental effort to look at the space for its own qualities (an important element in Irwin’s later work) and imagine what might be done with it. In other words, this was extreme conceptual art actually working, making people think about light, space, perception, and the limits of art. The result of Irwin’s reflections at the Ace Gallery was Scrim Piece (1971), one of his first works using polyester fabric.
4. Bethan Huws: Haus Esters Piece, Museum Haus Esters, Krefeld, Germany, 1993
The site of this exhibition was one of a pair of Modernist villas built by Mies van der Rohe in 1928–30 that had been converted into gallery space. When artist Bethan Huws first saw the house she found it so beautiful that she decided to leave it empty for her exhibition, treating it as both a readymade and an artwork in its own right that needed nothing added to it. To accompany her show, she did, however, prepare a text, which consisted of a selection of words — adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, declinations of the verb “to be,” etc. — excerpted from a conversation with her partner, Thierry Hauch, but that on their own meant absolutely nothing. Although the only permanent “void” created by Yves Klein is just next door in the Haus Lange (the second Mies van der Rohe villa), Huws claims she was not particularly inspired by Klein’s intervention, since she feels distant from his philosophy and “mystifications.” She has also said that the Haus Esters exhibition came at the end of an intense period of work that had left her creatively unsure and empty and that following the show she produced nothing for five years.
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