Museum Exhibition Catalogues, Monographs, Artist's Projects, Curatorial Writings and Essays
Christian Boltanski was born in Paris in 1944. His numerous solo exhibitions include shows at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art & Design, in Kansas City, Missouri, and the Contemporary Art Museum in Houston. He has shown four times at the Venice Biennale. Boltanski is represented in New York by the Marian Goodman Gallery.
Published by Silvana Editoriale. Edited with text by Danilo Eccher. Text by Mattia Fumanti, Giancarlo Gaeta, Federico Vercellone, Christophe Bolatansky, Laurence Sigal.
History and the status of the image have long been animating concerns in the artwork of French artist Christian Boltanski (born 1944). In Boltanski: Souls from Place to Place, the artist reflects on the outcomes of some of the most significant historical events of the 20th century and the pressure these events have put on methods of representation. Boltanski’s art asks: what images are appropriate in the wake of the 20th century’s crises? What is the relationship between collective memory, recollection and oblivion? How can absence function to prompt memory and testify to loss?
This monograph explores the defining moments in Boltanski’s life and work. The artist takes stock of his career in this volume on the occasion of a major commission from the city of Bologna, which has invited Boltanski to show work and organize programming at several venues across the city.
Hans Ulrich Obrist and Christian Boltanski are not only associated through their longstanding friendship: Boltanski was also the first artist that Obrist ever exhibited. Over the course of this friendship the two have often met for discussions, the earliest of which, from 1994, are published here. Whether on a taxi-boat in Venice, in his atelier or at an exhibition in Ljubljana, Botanski readily divulges information on his projects. His collaborations with other artists such as Ilya Kabakov, which have also led him into the field of performance arts such as opera and dance, are a particular theme of the conversations; on occasion, other interlocutors step in, such as the designer Jean Kalman or the sociologist Luc Boltanski (Christian Boltanski's brother). The result is an informal portrait of one of the most important artists of our time.
Published by MFA Publications, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Text by Christian Boltanski, Catherine Grenier. Forword by Luc Sante.
Christian Boltanski's votive installations, archives and objects, revolving around the fragile polarities of memory and amnesia, identity and anonymity, have made him one of the world's most renowned contemporary artists. And yet, despite the centrality of biography and testimony to his work, Boltanski's own story is little known and has never been fully told. Published on the occasion of the artist's sixty-fifth birthday, The Possible Life of Christian Boltanski, written in the form of a book-length interview (which the artist likens to a "psychoanalysis" or "confession") with the art historian Catherine Grenier, is Boltanski's oral autobiography. In it, he recounts his unusual wartime childhood ("my mother hid my father under the floorboards. He stayed there for a year and a half, between two floors in the house. He'd come out from time to time--I'm living proof of that!"), his career, friendships and marriage, successes and regrets, his approaches to art and teaching, how he created various installations, his relations with dealers and the public, and other matters that illuminate as never before his complex, enigmatic works. Boltanski is refreshingly phlegmatic about the realities of the world (art and otherwise), and he relates his remarkable stories--some enormously amusing, others tragic--with a matter-of-factness and self-deprecating humor that highlight his capacity for humane responsiveness. As both the self-portrait of a major contemporary artist and a frank, fascinating memoir, this is a document of capital importance.
Published by Hatje Cantz. Edited by Ralf Beil. Essay by Aleida Assmann.
Christian Boltanski is one of the most important European contemporary artists working today, masterful at staging rooms and situations. His work in photography and installation, among other mediums, evokes primary concerns of human existence like lifespan, identity, body, death and legacy: how will we be remembered? Christian Boltanski documents the artist's first comprehensive solo show in Germany after more than 10 years, which connects existing pieces with new creations in a unique installation transcending time and architecture. This monograph fathoms and examines the singular echo space of Christian Boltanski's art in philosophical, literary and art-historical essays by such well-known authors as Aleida Assmann and Ralf Beil, and is rounded off by an interview with the artist.
Published by Charta/PAC. Essay by Jean-Hubert Martin.
Invited by France's Institut National de L'audiovisuel, the country's chief television archive, to comb their collection for a project, Christian Boltanski, the noted French installation and video artist, became overwhelmed. To make the task manageable and personal, he settled on the idea of compiling footage from news broadcasts from every one of his 60 birthdays, on September 6, since 1944. He wove the clips into a three-screen projection, creating another of his trademark meditations on memory, time, and death. Boltanski's other recent works in video, installation, and photography emphasize the precariousness of our existence, but do so with luminosity and humor, and always involve the audience in the implacable passing of time.
PUBLISHER Charta/PAC
BOOK FORMAT Hardcover, 7 x 4.75 in. / 144 pgs / 32 color / 30 duotone.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 9/15/2005 No longer our product
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: FALL 2005 p. 144
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9788881585298TRADE List Price: $40.00 CAD $50.00
Published by Walther König, Köln. Interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist.
Under the pseudonym Amicale des tªmoins, Christian Boltanski created his poetic-conceptual project Entendre Les Chiens (Listen to the Dogs) for the 50th Venice Biennale, 2003. During the exhibition, he emitted a recording of the sounds of an island of errant dogs--who are kept away from the city of Venice on the island Lazzarretto Vecchio--from a series of speakers hidden throughout Venice.
PUBLISHER Walther König, Köln
BOOK FORMAT Paperback, 4.75 x 4.75 in. / 48 pgs / illustrated throughout
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 3/15/2005 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2005 p. 137
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9783883758961SDNR30 List Price: $35.00 CAD $40.00
Published by Walther König, Köln. Artwork by Christian Boltanski.
In this book of forbidden images, the responsibility for viewing photographs many would not want to see is left entirely up to the reader. A silver surface has been printed over each of the graphic, disturbing pictures reproduced herein, covering them up in their entirety--only upon scratching the surface off can the images beneath be revealed.
PUBLISHER Walther König, Köln
BOOK FORMAT Hardcover, 6 x 8.5 in. / 10 pgs / 1 image with scratch coating
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 5/2/2003 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2003
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9783883755908SDNR30 List Price: $40.00 CAD $50.00
Published by Walther König, Köln. Artwork by Christian Boltanski.
As much artist's book as catalogue, La Vie Impossible is unusual for its physical construction alone: its text is printed on black paper, with the images on alternating vellum, so that at each turn of the page one can see through the photographic image to the next black page (or look back at the previous text). The texts are fragmented autobiographical statements: "He left school very early on and made many spelling mistakes, he liked to brag about that;" or "He worked very little or at least that's what he said, he claimed that he lived a retiring life, that he spent his time in public gardens or in museums in winter because they were heated." 100 statements like these are juxtaposed with 100 photo and document collages.
PUBLISHER Walther König, Köln
BOOK FORMAT Hardcover, 10.5 x 8.25 in. / 208 pgs / 101 color.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 5/2/2002 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: FALL 2002
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9783883755441SDNR30 List Price: $45.00 CAD $55.00
Born in Paris in 1944, Christian Boltanski is undoubtedly one of the most interesting contemporary French artists, and has been a leading figure in the international art scene for over 20 years. He began his artistic career at a very young age with his large canvas paintings, but in 1968 he abandoned painting for a less traditional and more conceptual means of expression which included mixed media and found objects. He has made short films, true and fictional dossiers of his life; he has archived moments of his existence in cookie-tin boxes and has collected photographic portraits. Since the mid-80s, his work has been pervaded by an awareness of the tragic events of the Second World War. Boltanski presents themes dearest to the artist: the memories collected in everyday objects, relics of a collective past and redemption--through the artist's intervention--of nameless people without a history.
PUBLISHER Charta
BOOK FORMAT Paperback, 8.25 x 11 in. / 80 pgs / 50 duotone.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 4/2/2002 No longer our product
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2001
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9788881583096TRADE List Price: $25.00 CAD $30.00
Published by Charta. Artwork by Christian Boltanski. Edited by Danilo Eccher. Contributions by Daniel Soutif, Paolo Fabbri.
This volume presents an exhaustive survey of Boltanski's artistic career, documenting the researches that led him to the creation of his most recent installations in Bologna.
PUBLISHER Charta
BOOK FORMAT Paperback, 8.6 x 11 in. / 200 pgs / 54 color / 63 bw.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 8/2/1997 No longer our product
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 1998
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9788881581177TRADE List Price: $55.00 CAD $65.00
Hans Ulrich Obrist & Christian Boltanski: The Conversation Series
The Possible Life of Christian Boltanski
Christian Boltanski
Christian Boltanski: 6 Septembres
Christian Boltanski: Entendre Les Chiens
Christian Boltanski: Scratch
Christian Boltanski: La Vie Impossible
Christian Boltanski: Monte Di Pieta
Christian Boltanski