Christian Boltanski

Christian Boltanski
Christian Boltanski in 1990.
Nationality	French
Known for	Sculpture, Painting, Photography, Installation art

Christian Boltanski (born 6 September 1944) is a French photographer, sculptor, painter, and installation artist.

Life

Boltanski was born in Paris to a Jewish father of Ukrainian heritage and a Corsican mother. He lives and works in Malakoff and is married to the artist Annette Messager, with whom he sometimes collaborates.

His artistic work is haunted by the problems of death, memory and loss; he often seeks to memorialize the anonymous and those who have disappeared.

In his preliminary years, Boltanski's paintings were concerned primarily with themes of historical significance. However, by the 1970s, Boltanski removed himself from the painting arena and began his quest for remnants of his own past through selected artworks. These artworks led Boltanski to question the substance he had used when creating his own artworks. However, this introspectivism supplied him with the motive for other artworks in which non-truths and the realisation of fundamental truths converged. Boltanski reconstructed his own youth in this method. In doing so, Boltanski used a vast spectrum of media. For example, film, performance, photography and video. It is interesting to note that Boltanski maintained this vision and direction without focusing on the obvious contradiction of his self-understanding as a painter.

Moreover, the combination of varied media is a fundamental part of the spatial dimension which has been the focus of Boltanski's work since the mid-1980s.

For an eight year period from January 2010, Boltanski has contracted with the art collector and gambler David Walsh to have his working life filmed by a number of cameras in his studio in Paris and streamed live to MONA. The contract takes the form of a bet paid in monthly installments: Boltanski's kin will be paid a reduced amount if the painter dies within 2 years; Boltanski will gain ownership of the material only if he survives the eight years. Walsh, meanwhile, projects Boltanski's studio live in his Museum of Old and New Art in Tasmania. He says of the bet He (David Walsh) has assured me I will die before the eight years is up because he never loses. He's probably right. I don't look after myself very well[…] But I'm going to try to survive. You can always fight against the devil.”'[1]

Boltanski's next project is a highly anticipated, art-experiencial installation at the 2011 Venice Biennale which will take the form of an amusement park ride in which viewers will be exposed to differing parts of the overall exhibit.

Quotations

I began to work as an artist when I began to be an adult, when I understood that my childhood was finished, and was dead. I think we all have somebody who is dead inside of us. A dead child. I remember the Little Christian that is dead inside me.

— Christian Boltanski, Tate Magazine Issue 2

I stopped going to school at about age 12, and I was very crazy, and I stayed at home. One day I made a little object in plasticine and my parents said it was good. So I started to make more, and to make drawings, and I began to make large paintings in my bedroom.

— Christian Boltanski, Tate Magazine Issue 2

We are all so complicated, and then we die. We are a subject one day, with our vanities, our loves, our worries, and then one day, abruptly, we become nothing but an object, an absolutely disgusting pile of shit. We pass very quickly from one stage to the next. It's very bizarre. It will happen to all of us, and fairly soon too. We become an object you can handle like a stone, but a stone that was someone.

— Christian Boltanski

Exhibitions (Selected)

1972 documenta 5 1972 36. Venice Biennale 1975 Biennale de Paris 1980 39. Venice Biennale 1987 documenta 8

1993 Museum Ludwig, Cologne 1995 Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna 2008 Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall 2009 Haus der Kunst, Munich 2010 Grand Palais, Paris

External links

• Tate Magazine Interview
• ICP: Christian Boltanski
• Folkestone Triennial: Christian Boltanski
• Template:Fr Christian Boltanski
• Exhibitions listed at kunstaspekte.de

Further reading

• Peter Lodermeyer, Karlyn De Jongh & Sarah Gold, Personal Structures: Time Space Existence, DuMont Verlag, Cologne, Germany, 2009.
• Didier Semin and Alain Fleischer, "Christian Boltanski: la revanche de la maladresse," Art Press, September 1988, pp. 6–7.
• Didier Semin, Christian Boltanski, Paris, Art Press, 1988.
• Nancy Marmer, "Christian Boltanski: The Uses of Contradiction," Art in America, October 1989, pp. 168–181, 233-235.
• Lynn Gumpert and Mary Jane Jacob, Christian Boltanski: Lessons of Darkness, Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, 1988.
• Lynn Gumpert, Christian Boltanski, Paris, Flammarion, 1994.