the artist doesn't get dirty hands

In 1958 Yves Klein, an early performance and installation artist, created Le Vide (The Void) at a gallery in Paris. He painted the gallery white and led groups through his empty space. Was that experience infuriating, irritating, funny, sarcastic, brilliant, or all of that to the art crowd and general public at the time? It would be interesting to hear from someone who was there.

Joseph Nechvatal has written about Klein and his innovative practice. A video of Klein's well-known work, "Anthropologies", shows the artist directing 3 nude women covering their bodies in blue paint and imprinting their forms onto canvas. Klein never touches the women and he directs them verbally. It seems to me that this prefigures the contemporary high-art tendency to outsource the physical production of art objects to other professionals.