The Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia is the core of a citywide show of nothing much, or, rather much nothing, reports FT.com. The Big Nothing, as the show is called, features 60 artists from the 1970s and beyond who explore images and ideas of nothingness in five groupings. There are the metaphysical nothings via film and video, and a section on the vacuity of consumer culture, with Gabriel Orozco’s yogurt lids. There’s also Pennsylvania-born Andy Warhol’s Invisible Sculpture, a piece which if I’m not mistaken he created for the New York City avant club Area back in the ’80s.

It is a brilliant idea. The ancient Greeks found zero a powerful idea. Hindu religion revered the void. A Dada poet declared “Art does not exist,” while Marcel Duchamp elaborated: “Dada is nothing.” In 1958 Yves Klein trumped that with an empty exhibition, topped at the 2003 Venice Biennale by a perverse Closed Gallery. But the masterpiece of negativity remains Robert Rauschenberg’s Erased de Kooning Drawing from 1953

Oh, and I’m not mistaken about the Warhol sculpture. According to warholstars.org, “The 1974 Invisible Sculpture installation [is] considerably different than the actual Invisible Sculpture presented by Warhol at the Area nightclub in May 1985. It is the 1985 sculpture that is being presented by the ICA – basically an empty pedestal and wall label with a photograph of Warhol standing next to the sculpture taken by Patrick McMullan.”