19 Sep

Posted at 20:33h in ARTIST’S BOOKS

Munster: Westfalischer Kunstverein, 1974
22.2 x 16cm, 100pp plus card covers. Artist's book which coincided with a second museum exhibition by Boltanski in Munich within 18 months - this time the show being titled "Affiches, Accessoires, Decors, Documents photographiques".
The 49 photographs are all of Boltanski's comic performances in a suit pretending to be various parental and grand parental figures and sometimes the younger Boltanski. Sometimes the backgrounds are painted - further making the fact that the performance are theatrical and each group of photographs is preceded by a text with details of the "play". Texts including an essay by Klaus Honnef in German, French and English. VG+.

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10 Aug

Posted at 17:50h in ARTIST’S BOOKS

Paris: Centre national d'art contemporaine, 1974
21 x 14cm, 48pp plus original wrappers. Artist's book which displays 310 b/w images of the claimed belongings of a young woman in Bois-Colombes (a suburb of Paris). The third of a number such artist's books surveying everything owned by an anonymous woman.
on this occasion it is known that some of the objects were those of both Boltanski's parents and Annette Messager's mothers - a fact that is not admitted in the book. This indicates that one might not quite trust the other similar books in their veracity about attribution.
In a foreword Boltanski notes that the project's past history with him writing to museums offering the project. VG+.
Reference Flay Boltanski Catalogue Page 106.
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07 Aug

Posted at 20:52h in ARTIST’S BOOKS

Paris: Chorus, n.d. (1974)
24 X 18cm, 128pp plus pictorial covers. A single number of the art journal which alongside Boltanski are original contributions and articles on Annette Messager, Jacques Donguy, Jacques Monory and others.
Notable here are six pages by Boltanski which repeats his project displaying the supposed belongings of an anonymous person - here supposedly some living in Oxford, UK where the first exhibition of such an accumulation took place in 1973. VG+. Scarce publication.
Following Boltanski's contribution is a poem by Pierre Tilman entitled "Boltanski est" and after that Annette Messager has an original contrbution called "Quelque attitudes de femme extraites de quelques albums - collections par Annette Messager collectionneuse." which displays various found image of crying and fearful women, kissing couples, some cosmetic processes and cooking. There is a second prose poem by Tulman in his facsimile hand entitled "Annette, Christian, Jacques" as frontispiece which has a painting which shows Messager and a young somewhat handsome Boltanski. hugging.

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19 May

Posted at 20:02h in ARTIST’S BOOKS

Paris: Editions Georges Fall, 1974
22 x 16cm, 16pp (self cover). Artist's book which show objects from Annette Messager's first communion along with three photographs of a young girl (not Messager) preparing for the ceremony. The images are "representational" of the various objects and not the actual items used in Boltanski's partner's life. Each has an objective description below as if in a historical journal. Staples are a bit rusty else VG+. Scarce.

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09 May

Posted at 14:36h in ARTIST’S BOOKS

Dudweiler: Edition A.Q., 1974.
20.9 x 14.8cm, 32pp plus card covers with printed tipped on title label. First edition of this artist's book which again has photographic images of Boltanski dressed in suit and hat miming various methods of suicide - hanging, cutting one's throat or arms, drownings which all are shown in a second photograph to be fake - the knife is plastic, the drowning with a brick around the neck is only in a bowl of water, the hanging is from a rope that is not attached at either end.
However the last image of suicide is of the artist shooting himself in the head with a gun. That photograph has no associated proof of "fake" image so one may well assume the joke is on Boltanski himself as it was not fake, and he has in fact died.
This edition was printed in only 150 copies with 20 "du tete" copies and is very hard to find indeed. This copy is in VG+ condition although the label is slightly marked by the glue coming though the cheap paper. Reference: Flay Boltanski Catalogue Page 112.

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17 Oct

Posted at 17:31h in ARTIST’S BOOKS

Copenhagen: Louisiana Revy, 1973
35 x 25cm, 48pp plus wrappers. A single number of this artist's journal associated with the museum. This issue (n 2) has an original two-page contribution by Botlanski - a text translated in to Danish, "OM SIG SELV" which translates to "ABOUT YOURSELF" and is a text taken from a long interview with Uffe Harder. and a page of photographs from an uncredited "Inventory" work showing 40 belongings to an unnamed individual. Not referenced in any catalogue raisonne. VG+.

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19 Sep

Posted at 20:48h in ARTIST’S BOOKS

Paris: Editions Pierre Jean Oswald, 1973
18 x 11.4cm, 96pp plus card covers. This novel cum auto-biography was written under pseudonym by the artist's mother (this was not known if suspected until the mid-80s) and Boltanski provided the frontispiece for the book with 6 b/w images of him attempting to act out various facial expressions associated with sadness. The photographs were taken in a photo-booth.
This copy of the book is an ex-library copy with various stampings and labels inside and on spine but copies are extremely hard to find in any condition.

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04 Sep

Posted at 09:16h in ARTIST’S BOOKS

Jerusalem: Musse d'Israel, 1973
20.5 x 18cm, 48pp plus 12 transparent overlays on some pages and card covers. Exhibition catalogue for the first Boltanski exhibition in Israel and also the first time that the artist visited the Jewish state.
This catalogue is notable for a Inventory of an inhabitant of Jerusalem displaying 300 items in the form of photographic contact strips (a slightly different format from previous Inventories).
There is an interview in French with Boltanski and other texts in Hebrew. B/w illustrations throughout. ...

19 Aug

Posted at 20:19h in ARTIST’S BOOKS

Munster: Westfalischer Kunstverein, 1973
21 x 14.8cm, 80pp plus card covers. Artist's book which coincided with the title museum exhibition. The belongings of a person from Oxford are shown in 344 b/w small photographs as displayed in the museum. This is an archiving of someone's life through their ownership of things - allowing the viewer to make an interpretation of character despite the anonymity of the person.
This exhibition had been previously shown in the UK at Oxford and a similar publication made.
Boltanski's widely circulated proposal letter sent to various institutions to create the exhibition is reproduced as foreword in three languages and it is clearly important to the artist to have this text on view. One is tempted to assume out of revenge for those institutions that turned down his idea but it is hard to see the amiable artist as having such motives. When one realises that the rejection letters from a number of institutions are also reproduced at the back of the book thus making the artist's point a second time one can gleam a different motive: the lack of response to the idea becomes part of the project - the rejection of such a cataloguing of someone's life as perhaps being uninteresting by the Museum boards is an important marker to how society discards citizens who are deemed "unimportant". Texts in German, French and English. VG+.

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04 Aug

Posted at 10:17h in ARTIST’S BOOKS

Edinburgh: Richard Demarco Gallery, 1973
30 x 21cm exhibition catalogue consisting of outer 4pp folded cover and 5 sheets of insets. Boltanki had intended to create a transparent front step for the Demarco gallery thus freezing the ground underneath in a state of unchanging stasis for at least ten years however the, then, parochial right wing local authority refused him permission and the correspondence between artist, gallery and council and a reproduced photograph of the prototype step in situ are reproduced herein. Very rare and unknown early exhibition catalogue and work (or rather non-work).
When we gave Boltanski a copy of this catalogue in 2018 he had forgotten about the installation and had no idea that Demarco had published this catalogue (and without Boltanski's permission - although the artist did not seem to mind). VG+.

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24 Jul

Posted at 17:25h in ARTIST’S BOOKS

N.p. (Paris): s.p. (Boltanski), 1973.
21.7 x 16cm, 12pp plus card covers. Artist's book which displays found illustrations from a children's history book but with altered (slightly humorous) legends. First published in "Boltanski Les Modeles - CInq relations entre texte et Image" in 1979 (Nr 33 in Flay Catalogue) which incorrectly notes that only the maquette having been produced but the booklet was later published in Livres 1991 and also as a separate booklet. This example is signed by Boltanski on the first inner page. Slight rust to staples else VG+.

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26 Jun

Posted at 09:06h in ARTIST’S BOOKS

Dusseldorf: Stadtische Kunsthalle, 1973
31.5 x 22cm, b/w folder illustrated with images from the exhibition catalogue content of a further black on pink folder and 13 loose 30 x 21cm, 2pp sheets with contributions from each of the exhibiting artists - Enrico Baj, Michael Sandle, Edward Kieholz amongst others.
Boltanski has a 2pp original contribution - 9 appropriated b/w images of members of the Club Mickey (a Walt Disney fan club) taken from the larger installation of 62 photographs exhibited. A short explanatory text in German by the artist:
"I was eleven years old in 1955 and I was like these 62 children whose photo was featured in Club Mickey magazine that year. They had sent in the picture they thought best represented them: smiling and well coiffed, or with their favourite toy or animal. They had the same desires and interests as me.Today they must all be about my age, but I cannot find out what became of them. The image that has remained of them no longer corresponds to reality, and all these children's faces have disappeared, (...

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