PARIS— It is now half a century since Yves Klein organized what was almost certainly the world’s first “empty” exhibition — where absolutely nothing was shown — at the Galerie Iris Clert in Paris in 1958. To mark the anniversary, the Centre Pompidou has organized an exhibition showcasing 50 years of empty art exhibitions, on view through March 23 (it also travels to the Kunsthalle Bern in Switzerland, September 10 – October 11, 2009). The show has inevitably proved controversial, with many commentators predictably dismissing it as an empty gimmick. But, as its curators point out, the notion of emptiness raises serious questions: What are the limits of an exhibition? Or in other words, what is the exact definition of the term? What role does the container — the museum or gallery — play? And what about the visitors — can they themselves constitute an “exhibition”? Moreover, the Centre Pompidou show raises a further point, namely, to what extent can one successfully re-create ephemeral happenings?

Whatever one’s opinion, the idea of an empty exhibition is an extreme beyond which it is difficult to go. As with so much other radical art since the 1960s, one can make a case for laying the original inspiration, or blame, squarely at the feet of Marcel Duchamp. The “inventor” of the readymade — and consequently the grandfather of enough dubious installation works to fill several Centres Pompidou — Duchamp was the first to demonstrate the role played by the museum or gallery in determining what gets to be called “art.” He was also among the first to point the way toward the minimalist extreme of empty art with his 1919 piece Air de Paris (original lost), whose title encouraged the observer to consider not the 50cc glass ampoule of which it consisted, but rather its content, which was, of course, absolutely nothing. Another precursor often cited is Kasimir Malevich, whose Suprematist works such as Black Square (1915) and the famous "White on White" series (1918) led him firmly toward a dead end as far as painting was concerned. But while one could still conceivably display either the Malevich or Duchamp pieces in one’s living room, one would have a hard time exhibiting the “works” featured in the Centre Pompidou’s show at home — short of emptying it completely and charging admission at the door. And, as the Pompidou’s curators freely admit, their “re-creations” of historic empty exhibitions may be an even more extreme case of the emperor’s new clothes than were the originals, to the extent that many of the latter were arguably place- and/or circumstance-specific. So, to spare our readers potential disappointment were they tempted to stir forth from their armchairs, here is ARTINFO’s own retrospective of the top five historical exhibitions of absolutely nothing.

1. Yves Klein: The Specialization of Sensibility in the Raw Material State into Stabilized Pictorial Sensibility, Galerie Iris Clert, Paris, 1958
The mother of them all, this show became an overnight legend, essentially due to Klein’s masterly manipulation of communications and publicity, very much in the spirit of Dada antics 30 years before. This exhibition was above all an event, with an elaborate opening staged on the evening of Klein’s 30th birthday. Over 3,000 invitations were sent out — with illegal stamps in Klein’s trademark blue — while the uninvited were expected to pay an entrance fee of 1,500 francs. On arriving at the gallery — located, fittingly, on the Rue des Beaux-Arts — visitors found its windows had been “blued out” (again in Klein’s trademark color) so that the interior could not be seen from outside, and the usual entrance was closed in favor of a more circuitous route via a side door. There gallerygoers were met by two Republican Guards in full uniform and offered a cocktail: gin and Cointreau colored with methylene blue. They were then ushered into the gallery space in small groups. And what did they find once inside? A room freshly painted white, with a gray carpet on the floor and a white curtain that both dissimulated and drew attention to the service door. And nothing else. Meanwhile, outside, the waiting crowd rapidly swelled, and by 10 p.m., a near riot of several thousand had to be dispersed by the police and the fire brigade.

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.

5. Maria Eichhorn: Money at the Kunsthalle Bern, Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland, 2001
Maria Eichhorn’s intervention at Bern’s Kunsthalle was both a commentary on the realities of museum funding and an example of direct action: The artist opted to spend the budget allocated to her show on long-delayed repairs to the museum building, which was left completely empty during the period scheduled for the “exhibition.” In this manner Eichhorn drew attention to something the visitor does not usually see, namely, the artist’s point of departure when creating an exhibition — the empty gallery — and also ensured her “show” was prolonged well beyond its allotted time through the building’s renovation. The exact repairs were listed, with the cost and the name of the contractor, on the invitation to the opening, the exhibition poster, and the catalog cover. The catalog itself consisted of a detailed history of the Kunsthalle with an emphasis on its financing over the years. This had included, at the museum’s foundation, the issuing of share certificates, and Eichhorn added a further prong to her intervention by arranging for new certificates to be issued so as to increase the Kunsthalle’s capital. While her gestures may seem like charity turned into an art form, the actual legacy of her show for the Kunsthalle is, as she admits, ambivalent: The research she published in the catalog revealed a long history of mismanagement (money granted for repairs had repeatedly been used for other purposes), the museum lost admissions revenue during the exhibition because hardly anyone came, and the event generated a fair amount of negative publicity.