Joseph Beuys

Peter Fischli

David Weiss

Dan Graham

Geoffrey Batchen

Barbara Kruger

Giovanni Anselmo

John Baldessari

Bas Jan Ader

Douglas Fogle

Richard Flood

Vito Acconci

Kathy Halbreich

Mel Bochner

Jan Dibbets

Pamela Lee

Christian Boltanski

Sol Lewitt

Sarah Charlesworth

Valie Export

Stefan Gronnert

Broodthaers, Marcel.

Artists Using Photography 1960-1982

The Last Picture Show

Catherine Grenier

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.

The Possible Life of Christian Boltanski

Oldham Art Gallery

Published to accompany National Touring Exhibition of the same name organised by the Hayward Gallery, London, in collaboration with Oldham Art Gallery.

Imagined Communities

Hans Ulrich Obrist

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.

Christian Boltanski

Books

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