A receipt for a piece of invisible Yves Klein artwork — or “Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility” — is expected to sell for up to $551,000 when it goes up for auction April 6. Photo courtesy of Sotheby’s
March 23 (UPI) — Auction house Sotheby’s said it expects to fetch up to $551,000 for an unusual item — a receipt for a piece of invisible art by French artist Yves Klein. Sotheby’s said Klein sold numerous pieces of imaginary art, which he dubbed Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility, in exchange for a weight of pure gold, and he would issue receipts to the buyers.
The receipt up for auction April 6 is dated Dec. 7, 1959, just a few years before the artist’s death in 1963.
The auction house said the receipts are rare today because Klein invited buyers to participate in a ritual that involved burning the receipt and throwing half of the gold into the Seine River in order to make the buyer the “definitive owner” of the conceptual artwork.
The receipt, originally issued to antiques dealer Jacques Kugel, is one of 100 items being auctioned by Sotheby’s on behalf of art advisor and former gallery owner Loic Malle.
Sotheby’s said Klein’s conceptual artwork predicted the rise of cryptocurrency and the exchange of non-fungible tokens, or NFTs.
“Some have likened the transfer of a zone of sensitivity and the invention of receipts as an ancestor of the NFT, which itself allows the exchange of immaterial works,” the auction catalog states. “If we add that Klein kept a register of the successive owners of the ‘zones,’ it is easy to find here another revolutionary concept — the ‘blockchain.'”
Sotheby’s said it expects the receipt to sell for between $331,000 and $551,000.
