CHRISTIAN BOLTANSKI

EXHIBITION CATALOGUES

BEN VAUTIER. CHRISTIAN BOLTANSKI. JEAN LE GAC. JOHN C. FERNIE. 1972.

Luzern: Kunstmuseum Luzern, 1972 30 x21cm, unpaginated (c. 300pp) plus card covers. Exhibition catalogue which covers four solo shows including Boltanski alongside Ben, Le Gac and Fernie. Each artist has a section for their own works - Boltanski's reprints Reconstitution de Gestes Effectues par Christian Boltanski and Album de Photo de la Famille D. 19390 - 1965 consisting of 138 found photographs which Boltanski organised into a family album. Texts in French. Mild colouration of white card covers else VG+. Scarce.

Ben Vautier, Jean le Gac, John C. Fernie

REALITES. 1973. POSSIBLE MAQUETTE?

St Etienne: Musee d'art et d'industrie de St Etienne, 1973 32 x 24cm, outer manilla folder which appears to be hand made and with carefully written titles and lists of artists. Internally there are 26 different 30 x 21cm, 1pp sheets with biographies and texts on the participating artists and some images (poor quality reproductions) of some of the works with the look of the pages being like bad xerox copies but printed. The outside of the cover notes the exhibition as being of Minimal Art and Hyperrealism from the USA and Support-Surface art from France and the participants include Bertholin, Cane, Bechtle, Cottingham, Don Eddy, Salt, Staiger, Flavin, Judd, LeWitt, Stella, Le Gac, Messager, Meurice, and Viallatas well as Boltanski. Boltanski's contribution is a reproduced photograph of the artist pretending to be a young boy approaching swans on a pond from 1972. This publication is unknown in any literature and it is possible this is a maquette for a non-printed catalogue. The hand drawn cover (which the pencil and red felt tip pen ink is fading and where the guide lines for the text to be written can still be seen) and the poor quality interior pages suggests this is exactly that. Clearly a rarity and possibly unique, this would be one of Boltanski's earliest group shows.

CHRISTIAN BOLTANSKI JEAN LE GAC ANNETTE MESSAGER. 1973.

DIjon: Musee Rude, 1973
30 x 21cm, 76pp plus card covers. Exhibition catalogue that should be regarded as a joint artist's book - with original contributions by Boltanski, Le Gac and Annette Messager.
Boltanski's part is "5 BROUILLONS DE CHRISTIAN BOLTANSKI MARS - MAI 1973" - five hand-written texts in facsimile of the artist's handwriting which discuss various projects undertaken in the past year.
Le Gac has "L'ENQUETE" - a quasi thriller short story with one b/w image. Messager has "SUR LES TRAVAUX DE L'ATELIER" - again texts in reproduction of her originals although typed. ` VG+ condition. Scarce.

Annette Messager, Jean le Gac

12 x 1. 1975.

Bruxelles: Palais des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles, 1975 30 x 21.5cm, 30pp plus card covers. Exhibition catalogue for a group show with the participation of Ben, Buren, Erro, Filliou, Pfeuger, Le Gac, Monory and others as well as Boltanski. Texts in German and French. Strangely the essays have reproduced works by non-exhibiting artists and none by the actual 12 artists. VG+.
JOINT WITH:
Bruxelles: Palais des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles, 1975
Four, 30 x 21cm, 1pp - the textual only gallery handout for the exhibition.

MODELLBILDER. DAS GLUCK, DIE SCHONHEIT UND DIE TRAUME. 1976.

Bonn: Rheinisches Landesmuseum, 1976
20 x 20.5cm, 120pp plus original pictorial card covers. Exhibition catalogue for a joint show between the life long partners and artists. Boltanski's images are all found (appropriated) images while Messager reproduces found drawings and cartoons. Both artists are working here in the field of appropriation - the act of choosing a particular image is the artistic act and by recontextualising the image (by displaying it in, say, a museum) the picture is given a different meaning or interpretation or function.
Short essays in German by Lothar Romain and Klaus Honnef. VG+.

Annette Messager

BEETHOVEN. MUSIC FOR THE MILLIONS. 1977.

Arnhem: Stichting Festival, 1977
23.5 x 17cm, 28pp plus card covers. Exhibition catalogue and programme for the annual festival which includes Annette Messager, Pieter Engels, Sigurdur Gudmundsson, Timm Ulrichs, Carolee Schneemann and others. Boltanski exhibited "Les 21 vetements de Francois C. en 1972" and there is one b/w image of part of that work.

Annette Messager, Carolee Schneemann, Pieter Engels, Sigurdur Gudmundsson, Timm Ulrichs

WORDS WORDS. 1979.

Bochum: Museum Bochum, 1979
26.4 x 21cm, 52pp plus card covers. Exhibition catalogue for a group show initially at the Museum Bochum, Germany, and later at the Palazzo Ducale, Genova, Italy. The artists include Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Agnetti, Anselmo, Antin, Arakawa, Baldassari, Bill Beckley, Boetti, Burgin, Ian Burn, Calzolari, Carpi, Chia, Chiari, Fulton, Gerz, Huebler, Kaprow, Kawara, Kosuth, Le Gac, Levine, Mario Merz, Annette Messager, Robert Morris, Nauman, Nonas, Oppenheim, Paolini, Pozzi, Salvo, Venet and Weiner. Each is given a section in the book with one b/w image.
Boltanski's contribution is a series of five photographs "Le Recit du Pere" from 1976. All are reproduced along with a short text in German and italian.
Some foxing to the inside wrappers else VG.

FRENCH ART. AN ENGLISH SELECTION. 1979.

London: Serpentine Gallery, 1979
15 x 21cm, 32pp plus card covers. Group show in the UK with the participation of Annette Messager, Anne & Ptrick Poiret and others as well as Boltanski. The latter exhibited Japanese Gardens I - V (large colour images created using models and constructed backgrounds). Two images reproduced (one in colour, one in b/w) and a short text in English. Sadly this catalogue has some contemporary notes made by a critic on a number of the pages but the images of the works are not found elsewhere to our knowledge.

LES MODELES. CINQ RELATIONS ENTRE TEXTE & IMAGE. 1979. WITH VERY DETAILED CATALOGUE RAISONNE AS APPENDIX.

Paris: Cheval d'attaque, 1979
22 x 16cm, 108pp plus pictorial card covers. An artist's book of sorts (although published on the occasion of the exhibition in la Maison de la Culture de Chalon-sur-Saone so may also be seen as an exhibition catalogue) in that five previously published works are reprinted in chronological order after a short interview between Irmeline Lebeer and Boltanski.
The reproduced works are Recherche et presentation de tout ce qui reste de mon enfance, Tout ce que je sais d'une femme...., L'appartement de la rue de Vaugirard, Les portraits photographiques de C.B., and Les Histoires. What commonality these works have is that each image has an associated text beneath it - sometimes accurate, other times fictional.
At the back of the book there is a 44pp bibliography creates by Silke Paull and Herve Wurz which is more detailed than any other up to that point listing many early works missed out in Flay's Catalogue of 1991 including early sculptures. VG+.

KUNST IN EUROPA NA’ 68…. 1980.

Gent: Stad Gent, 1980 27.5 x 21cm, 204pp plus card covers. The cover has the title tipped on as a triangular printed label. The exhibition catalogue for a major look back at the artistic endeavours of the year 1968 which includes sections on Art & Languages, Beuys, Broodthaers, Brouwn, Buren, Victor Burgin, Cragg, the Red Crayola, Darboven, Dibbets, Dimitrijevic, Fabro, Feldmann, Flanagan, Gilbert & George, Hans Haacke, Imi Knoebel, Yannis Kounellis, Long, Merz, Panamarenko, Paolini, Poirier, Schum van Elk, Vilmouth and Zorio as well as Boltanski. Boltanski's section includes 4 images of installations in b/w. Texts in German by Jan Hoet, Gemano Celant, Johannes Cladders, KJ Geirlandt, Sandy Nairne, Piet Vandaalen, Koenraad De Wolf, Tony Godfrey, Alexandra Beaton, F. Menna, and Albert Kuiper. Slight marks to the card covers else VG+.

COMPOSITIONS. 1981.

Paris: ARC/Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris,1981
21 x 19.5cm, 48pp plus card covers. Exhibition catalogue for a major show of posed photographs by the artist (mostly colour) where models and brightly coloured objects (such as toys, pencils and drawing tools) are arranged to create highly saturated multiple images shown against black backgrounds. Essay by Dominique Viéville and an interview between Boltanksi and Suzanne Pagé (both in French).
This period of work broke temporarily with the artist's previous practice using found or restaged photographs and now utilised his greater technological ability to create much larger works in such formats.
VG+.

POINT DE VUE IMAGES. FACONS DE PEINDRE. 1981.

Chalon-sur-Saone, Maison de la Culture de Chalon-sur-Saone, 1981
30 x 21cm, 56pp plus card covers. Exhibition catalogue for a photographic exhibition which alongside Boltanski included Bernd and Hilla Becher, Jamesd Collins, Jan DIbbets, Ger van Elk, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Hamish Fulton, Gilbert & George, John Hilliard, Urs Luthi, Annette Messager, Peter Roehr and Ed Ruscha. Unusually each artist's work is displayed in colour but shot from a distance which shows how it is exhibited on a wall,
Boltanski's work are two photographs from the Composition Grotesques series. An extract from an artist's interview is reprinted at the back of the catalogue (from 1977). VG+.