Certainly imageView.setImageResource(0) works. It has never failed for me and I have used it many times.
setImageResource is usually passed the reference R.drawable,(the reference for the picture), which is stored as an int, but displayed in the R.java class as a hex value, 0xf2fs... So assuming this reference exist it will show a picture, if you later pass that same imageview a reference which does not exist the old picture will no longer show. So, if you pass it 0, or 5 or an int which does not match a resource referenced in your R.java class it will remove the picture completely from the src of the imageView. So if you are passing 0 to the old reference of the imageView.