A 1959 Yves Klein Receipt Book Goes to Auction in New York
A receipt book from 1959 by the French artist Yves Klein is one of the headline items at Doyle's Important Fine Art sale in New York. The sale starts at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, 12 November, and includes 90 lots, the term auction houses use for each individual item on offer.
The Klein book comes from the collection of Robert Pincus-Witten and Leon Hecht. Works from that collection will be offered alongside pieces by Odilon Redon, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot and Alexander Calder, according to Artnet News.
The book is tied to Klein's Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility, a project from 1959. In it, buyers handed over gold in exchange for empty zones of artistic sensitivity, a concept Klein used to describe the intangible value of his work. The French-language receipts in the book specify 320 grams of fine gold.
Each buyer had a choice once the deal was done. They could keep the receipt, or they could burn it in a ritual that completed the transfer. Artnet's report describes both options as part of the original exchange, so the paper itself was never just a record of the sale.
Doyle is based in New York, and the sale will take place there on Wednesday. Bidding is the process by which buyers compete for each lot, with the highest bid winning once the auctioneer closes the sale of that item.
The collection pairs the Klein book with work by three other artists whose names are widely known in the art world: Redon, Corot and Calder. Each lot will be sold separately, so the outcome for the receipt book will be known only once its own bidding ends on the day.
