Iris Clert Gallery - Rise To Success

Rise To Success

The celebrity of Clert, Klein, and the Galerie Iris Clert continued to rise and blossom with the success of the Monochrome Propositions, culminating a year later, with another showing of Klein's, le Vide (The Void). The immaterial exhibition opened on April 28, 1958, Klein’s 30th birthday.

The idea behind The Void, much like Micro-Salon d’Avril, was diabolically simple: Klein completely emptied the Iris Clert Gallery except for a single bare display case, painted it a single shade of glossy white, and called it art. He claimed that by emptying out the gallery, he was merely following a tangent which his artwork had led him to:

Klein did not necessarily deem the empty gallery as the artwork, but the emptiness, the void, the atmosphere itself which he claimed to have fabricated. In one way or another, much of Klein’s artwork had led him down this tangent: he had experimented earlier by cutting rectangular holes into some of his old canvases ("monochrome voids" he called them), and had emptied out a single room in the nearby Galerie Colette Allendy a few months earlier. However, these were all extremely private acts of artistic experimentation. The Void, on the other hand, was inherently a public act, meant as an event for the larger populous to absorb and participate in.

The participatory nature of the exhibition was critical to the realization of the piece. The invitations, printed on small postcards, sporting a monochrome blue stamp, seemed to invite and condone this active participation:

3,500 of these invitations were sent out, 3,000 of them in Paris. Always a master of personal publicity, Klein's efforts were all in an attempt to create a buzz around the opening night. Around the modest entrance of the Iris Clert Gallery was a large blue drapery, and on "guard" were two Republican Guards in full regalia, whose presence Iris Clert had gained through one of her many connections, and two additional "bodyguards," in reality a couple of Klein’s judo friends, ironically meant to guard the guards. A blue cocktail was also served, a combination of gin, Cointreau, and methylene blue, which, much to Klein’s surprise and delight, caused his patrons to urinate blue the next day.

The event was an undeniable success, if only by numbers alone. Klein later recalls that by 9:30, "The whole place is packed, the corridor is full, the gallery as well." By 9:45, "It is frenzied. The crowd is so dense that one cannot move anywhere." Alternatively, it was also a success if one goes by the reactions of fellow artists and intellectuals. Albert Camus commented simply: "With the void, full empowerment." Art critic Jean Grenier wrote that le Vide represented "the numerous magic and incalculable powers given in a single color."

In November 1958, Klein exhibited again in the Iris Clert Gallery with Jean Tinguely, with whom he had developed a friendship with during his Monochrome Propositions exhibition. This friendship evolved into artistic collaboration sometime during The Void. The joint exhibition was titled Vitesse pure et Stabilité monochrome (Pure Speed and Monochrome Stability), and consisted of the monochrome aesthetics of Klein combined with the mechanical, dynamic, and often interactive nature of Tinguely’s art. Pure Speed was a reasonable success, and this friendship would continue to strengthen until Klein’s death as the two would develop their artistry, often in tandem with one another.

After the extravaganza of le Vide eventually subsided, Klein's new found celebrity allowed him artistic endeavors based on commission, including the collaborative design, construction, and decoration of the Gelsenkirchen Opera House in West Germany. Klein seemed to have moved beyond the cramped confines of the Galerie Iris Clert: the small gallery could only house the plans of the project. These plans were given the lengthy title of La Collaboration Internationale entre Artistes et Architectes dans la realization du Nouvel Opéra et theater de Gelsenkirchen (International Collaboration between Artists and Architects in the realization of the New Opera and theater of Gelsenkirchen), and acted as a sort of avant-garde press release for the new opera house.

In June 1959, the Iris Clert Gallery held what was to be Klein’s final exhibition in the gallery, La forêt d’ésponges monochromes (Forest of Monochrome Sponges). The exhibition displayed a new tangent of Klein’s: sponges soaked in his customary International Klein Blue paint, dried, and suspended in the air by small sticks. These pieces were the conceptual evolution of the aerostatic sculptures Klein had released into the air on the opening night of his Monochrome Propositions exhibition: monochrome sculptures suspended in the monochrome space that he had previous declared present by means of The Void. Klein was disappointed with the results of his monochrome sculptures, however, mostly because of the means of aerostatic suspension, small sticks coming from a weighty base, which seemed entirely unsatisfactory to him. Klein’s aim was for true, unassisted suspension.

After La forêt d’ésponges monochromes, Klein began to investigate alternative means to this unassisted suspension, the most promising of which consisted of hydrogen balloons inserted into the center of his sponges. In the enthusiasm of his new discovery, Klein quickly drew up plans and sent them to Clert. On the other hand, Klein had become increasingly paranoid and protective of what he considered his intellectual property. Klein was all too aware of Clert’s friendship with Takis, an artist pursuing similar means of aerostatic suspension and levitation. Subsequently, Clert responded angrily to the plans Klein had sent her, apparently siding with Takis. Klein appeared to be quite hurt by what he saw as a personal betrayal, and he consequently severed his ties with Clert and her gallery.