YVES KLEIN - “Le Saut dans le vide” [The Leap into the Void]

In the continuation of his work on pictorial space, Klein turned his attention to space itself, in other words the void, as specified in his theory of impregnation.

One of his first productions on the theme of the void was the famous exhibition “of the void” in 1958, entitled La spécialisation de la sensibilité à l’état matière première en sensibilité picturale stabilisée [The specialisation of sensibility in the raw material state into stabilised pictorial sensibility]. For this exhibition, Klein himself impregnated the space with artistic sensibility using blue as an intermediary. Indeed, whereas the interior space of the empty gallery was painted entirely in white, parts of the exterior where decorated in blue: the display window was painted blue, visitors were met by a blue curtain, the invitation cards and stamps were blue, and even the cocktails offered by the artist were tinted with methylene blue.

Thus the white space of the gallery could be perceived as being contaminated by the blue.

However, Yves Klein’s most renowned work on the void is undoubtedly his “Saut dans le vide” [Leap into the void], a photograph of which he presented in a fake issue of the “Journal du Dimanche” dedicated to his exploration of the void, on 27 November 1960.

On the front page of the newspaper, the leap appeared as a feat. The title of the image had a sensational tone: “A man in space! The painter of space throws himself into the void!” More precisely, as he explained in the legend accompanying the photo, he was attempting by this action to come as close as possible to space. “To paint space, I owe it to myself to go there, to that very space… without illusions or tricks, nor with a plane or a parachute or a rocket ship: [the painter of space] must go there by his own means, with an independent individual force, in a word, he must be capable of levitation.”

But does this mean that the photo was authentic? Although it is obviously a photomontage, the leap was not faked. When he carried out his action, Klein was met on the ground by an outstretched tarpaulin. This was the only “precaution” that has been removed from the final image, by replacing it with a shot of the street before the leap.

So Klein really did jump, thus experimenting and impregnating himself with the immaterial qualities of the void, so that he could transmit them to his artworks.