In July 2021 we published an article about a new art form, crypto art. Digital creations that imitate the circuit of monetary transactions of cryptocurrencies, they are sold for up to millions of dollars. They are called NFT, in English, "non-fungible token", and are works of digital art stored on platforms or marketplaces. With its purchase, the new owner acquires the property rights, protected by a code called blockchain, an inviolable chain, which preserves the sales and purchase history of the work.
As often happens in the history of art, faced with innovation, with what is different, many have cried to the heavens, questioning not only the artistic quality, but even if this act is truly art. However, to the tranquility -or horror- of the orthodox conservatives of the traditional paradigms of culture, there was already an artist born in Nice, in 1928 -almost a century ago!- and on April 28, 1958, he inaugurated a exhibition entitled "The void" at the Iris Clert Gallery in Paris. In it he did not present any physical work, but a space full of "pictorial sensibility in its purest form". We refer to the great Yves Klein, famous for his paintings and sculptures in a particular blue, the International Klein Blue, a color registered by him, really very special, saturated, vibrant and unique, and that if you want to discover in first person -nothing more far away to believe knowing him through the screen of the telephone or computer monitor - it is enough to approach the Klemm Foundation in front of Plaza San Martín, in our beloved city of Buenos Aires. The Klemm Collection preserves the “Vénus bleue”, a work by Klein from 1962, the year of his untimely death. (one)
Vénus bleue (Blue Venus) sculpture in resin and painted in his Klein Blue. Copy 232 of a print run of 300 belongs to the Federico Klemm Collection.
Returning to the work that brings us together, if Klein wanted with this blue to reach the physical conception of a total, absolute blue, freeing color from the prison of the line, with his work Zone de sensibilité picturale immatérielle (Zone of immaterial pictorial sensibility ) arrives at the idea and materialization of the absolute itself, that “platonic” good to which every artist and every work of art, of all times, aspires. The public arrived at the Parisian gallery and saw the windows painted Klein Blue, passed through some blue curtains and finally arrived at the room, empty, except for, according to Klein, “pure sensitivity of the color blue”. The conceptual work completed his cycle, like any work of visual art, with its sale. This included some receipts and a ritual that had to be strictly respected. A receipt for payment in gold for the work had to be burned before witnesses chosen by the artist, while he threw the same gold into the Seine. There were three transfer ceremonies, all well documented.
On April 6, Sotheby's in its Parisian branch auctioned off one of these receipts, the “Zone of Immaterial Pictorial Sensitivity Series n°1, Zone n°02”. Originally acquired by the famous antique dealer Jacques Kuguel on December 7, 1959 from Klein himself, its last owner was the French art consultant and collector Loïc Malle, who had bought it 35 years earlier. It faced the auction with an estimate between 280,000 and 500,000 euros, and was finally sold at a final price of 1,063,500 euros, the equivalent of 1,161,129 dollars.
The receipt sold was Cachet de garantie (guarantee seal) number 2, dated and signed by Yves Klein. It measures only 8.5 x 19.5 cm, it has an -IKB- watermark, the aforementioned acronym International Klein Blue, and the text “Reçu Vingt grammes d'or Fin contre une Zone de Sensibilité Picturale Immatérielle. Cette zone transferable de peut être cédée par son propriétaire qu’au double a sa valeur d'achat initiale. (Signatures et dates pour transferts au dos). La transgresseur s’expose à l'annihilation totale de sa propre sensibilité”, which in Spanish means “I receive twenty grams of fine gold for an area of immaterial pictorial sensibility. This transferable area can be transferred by its owner only at twice its initial purchase value. (Signatures and dates for transfers on the back). The transgressor exposes himself to the total annihilation of his own sensibility”.
Klein shares with the contemporary artists who create NFTs the fact that they give the certificate of authenticity great value, to the point of sustaining the value of the work -artistic and economic- in these certificates. Let us also note how these transaction regulations were a century ahead of those of NFTs. These "sensitivity zones" were successively bought and sold and the creator himself kept a record of those sales. The block chains of crypto art and cryptocurrencies similarly encode the transaction history of the object - artistic or monetary. But while these blockchains make the transaction good incorruptible, that is, it cannot be falsified or misrepresented, or if it does, it is recorded on the chain, Yves Klein appealed to a deeper concept and humor - a provision quite absent in contemporary art-: like a curse “The transgressor exposes himself to the total annihilation of his own sensibility”. These certifications share, between Klein and the crypto-artists, another characteristic, that of separating the artistic aspect and object, from the financial aspect and object. On the one hand there is artistic creation, in this case a space of pictorial sensibility, and on the other, the invention of the artifact that sustains its transaction.
The monetary value of art acquires multiple dimensions and reflections in Klein's work. It is with the most luxurious material on the planet, gold, that this emptiness is acquired, as well as the most precious of an artist's goods, his sensitivity. Sensitivity in its pure state, not contaminated or reified in a single object, but that emptiness contains them all. Because the financial aspect of art is safely contained on a single sheet of paper, the spiritual aspect of art is free to take any form Klein wishes, even a non-form. The idea of emptiness, of stripping the work of material to reach its absolute value, is fundamental in Yves Klein's creation. Let's take a look at the photograph that was auctioned at the same auction, and also belonging to the Loïc Malle collection, titled Leap into the void, October 23, 1960. Monocopy in silver gelatin in the large format of 124 x 94 cm. Harry Shunk photographed Yves Klein himself literally throwing himself into the void on Rue Gentil-Bernard in Fontenay-aux-Roses, on the outskirts of Paris, for a project the artist called Man in Space. The painter of space throws himself into the void. In an instant he managed to capture his conception of art as a manifesto, while creating one of the iconic images of twentieth-century art.
The man in space. The painter of space throws himself into the void, a photograph by Yves Klein from 1960, sold for $75,600 on April 6.
Significantly, this was the first auction for the auction house where buyers were allowed to pay off their debt with cryptocurrencies. The symbolic circle is closed, however it is not known, at least for now, with which currency Klein's work was bought. Let us imagine that this great opera of intangible art, originally paid for with gold then thrown into the Seine River, was recently acquired with money that is also intangible, without gold backing in any bank.
Note:
1. From March to November 2022, the Federico Jorge Klemm Foundation presents the first episode of its Program “Encantador De La Noche. Federico Klemm 1942 - 2002”. You can visit him at Marcelo T. de Alvear 626, in the City of Buenos Aires, from Monday to Friday, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.