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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22 Jul

Posted at 22:27h in PHOTOGRAPHS

Edinburgh: Demarco, 1973
2-.5 x 25.5cm, offset reproduction of original photograph (now lost) with reproduced hand-annotations by Richard Demarco who took the photograph during a visit to Boltanski's studio in Paris. Mounted on board (for exhibition) this was later signed in blue ink by Christian Boltanski. 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, (...

02 Jun

Posted at 14:55h in EXHIBITION CATALOGUES

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.

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02 Jun

Posted at 10:20h in ARTIST’S BOOKS

Oxford: Museum of Modern Art. 1973
18 x 11cm, 8pp (self cover). An early artist's book which shows 52 small b/w images of what is claimed to be the belongings of a woman (it is not clear if she is dead or alive) from "hankerchiefs to cupboards". This is one of the artist's first "arxhive projects" where a life is displayed through the things owned by an individual.
In a note at the end Boltanski explains that he had written to a number of museums to initiate such a project - to show the things owned by an anonymous person with "concerning themselves with such things as classification and labelling" - most refused however Peter Ibsen at the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford agreed to the show and this book both is the documentation, catalogue and artist's publication from that event. VG+.

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10 Apr

Posted at 18:57h in ARTIST’S BOOKS

Frankfurt: AQ Photos supplement, 1973
22.5 x 14cm, 6pp (single folded sheet). A supplement to the AQ artist's journal entirely dedicated to five b/w images of Boltanski playing the role of his parents in posed photographs. The supplement was a publicity brochure for the journal but it is effectively a Boltanski artist's book. To our knowledge this is not referenced in any catalogue raisonne. VG+. Scarce.

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19 Mar

Posted at 21:25h in ARTIST’S BOOKS

London: Studio International Ltd, 1973
30.5 x 24.5cm, 160pp plus card covers. Single number of the long running and very important art journal - to which Boltanski has added a page work (taken from the book of the same title) of a child making a paper airplane. Offered as part of a section on contemporary French art. Some wear to spine and glue beginning to weaken after nearly 50 years. Else VG.

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02 Mar

Posted at 08:14h in EXHIBITION CATALOGUES

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....

07 Feb

Posted at 09:14h in ARTIST’S BOOKS

Paris: Gallery du Tournesol, 1973
24.5 x 17cm, 8pp artist's book printed black on cream card with four original lithographs of drawings with text by Romero and a short text "Manuel du Voyager" (travel diary) written by Jean Jacques Leveque.
Additional to that on the third page there is an original contribution by Boltanski which is relatively unknown - two photographs of a mother and father with a child and below is the text written by Boltanski (our translation):
"The two photographs must have been taken on the same day and almost in the same place. The little boy in the two pictures must be three or four years old, the sun is shining, the man and the woman look serious and sad, there are ceramic tiles on the steps and a large stone pot in which is planted a tree. The woman is young and beautiful, the man is dressed in white (he stands straight as if at attention). You think you can make out a house. in the picture on the right, the little boy seems to be singing.
Behind the photograph on the left is written in pencil "with my father Seville 1934", behind the one on the right "with my mother Sevilla 1934"
For Juan Romero and his parents whose names I don't know. Christian Boltanski, Mai 1972."

It is not clear if these photographs are really of Romerpo and his parents or a fiction. Romero was a friend of Boltanski's who had organised exhibitions by the former at the same gallery when Boltanski was the director (it was founded by his mother). This contribution is not mentioned in any catalogue raisonne that we know of and is relatively forgotten.
BR>...

03 Oct

Posted at 08:52h in LETTERS AND DOCUMENTS

Paris: Multiplicata, n.d. (1972)
30 x 21cm, 1pp. Original vintage xerox with a text announcing two books - one by Boltanski "10 PORTRAITS PHOTOGRAPHIQUES DE CHRISTIAN BOLTANSKI 1946 - 1964" and the other by Jean Le Gac "LE DECOR".
The letter announces they can supply signed examples of the book for 80Fr. Folded as issued for mailing else VG+.
JOINT:
Original mailing envelope franked 3-10-72 hand addressed by Boltanski to M. Berg.

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