Earlier in the week, a receipt for a piece of ‘invisible art’ was auctioned in Paris for nearly $1.2 million. Auction house Sotheby’s mentioned in the catalogue about the pay stub that “This work is guaranteed and received an irrevocable bid”. 

The receipt sold for $1,151,467.40, more than twice the estimated cost of $551,000. While paying for nothing might seem strange, the receipt comes from the ‘Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility’ exhibition series of the mid-1900s, where pioneering French performance artist Yves Klein sold vacant rooms to collectors in exchange for gold bullion.

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Klein then invited collectors to burn receipts and dump half their gold in the Seine river, logically explaining that it would make them the definitive owners of the zone. 

The auctioned certificate of authentication stood the test of time since collector, Jacques Kugel didn’t burn it, as per The Guardian. It has been displayed in various locations, from London to Paris, before ex-gallery owner Loïc Malle bought it, and auctioned the stub off along with other artworks in his possession. 

The ticket, which is designed to look like a bank cheque, holds Klein’s signature and dates back to December 7, 1959, several years before the artist died in 1962. 

Experts note how Klein anticipated the modern NFT with Sotheby’s adding, “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”. 

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Currently, it remains unknown if the buyer – identified as a “private European collector” – paid in cryptocurrency for the purchase. 

Last September, there was a similar incident, where a Danish museum gave an artist $84,000 to use its commissioned space, but the artist pocketed the cash and handed over two blank canvases titled “Take the Money and Run”.