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.

...

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....

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1973.
Three different cards - all 10.5 x 14.8cm, 2pp - each with a typographic design on the front with only the respective initials O.A.P.T./A.F.V.T./M.F.V.T and coloured backgrounds grey, mustard and blue. The initials stand for OLD AGE PENSIONERS TEA - and is allocated as for Simon Cutts, ARMOURED FIGHTING VEHICLE TEA and MOTOR FISHING VESSEL TEA both claimed for Finlay himself. A trio of related cards which are collectively designated by Finlay as "Tea-Cards" which recalls the small collectible cards found in tea packs as promotional items in the first half of the 20th century. One suspects a number of in-jokes between Finlay and Cutts are represented in these cards. VG+.

...

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1973
16 × 26.5cm, printed white outer folder content of a 16 × 26.5cm offset lithograph with an additional sheet with a key to the drawing. Karl Torok created a drawing of a topiary landscape for Finlay and each element is identifies as a member of a land-owning extended family and its staff eg Gardner, Cook, Great-Uncle William, Mama, Emily & Rose. It may be that this is an actual family portrait of sorts or a metaphor for how elements of a formal garden might be seen as related to each other. What is noticeable is that the father/mother and children are in the centre of the work and the more distant family and staff tend to be found at the sides. VG+.

...

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>...

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.

...

Dusseldorf: Galerie Schmela, n.d. (1972)
10.5 x 15cm, 2pp announcement card for an exhibition of Beuys drawings with an image of two such drawings by Beuys on both sides of the card (one overprinted with gallery details). The second drawing has the word FETTECKE! clearly written which translates as FAT CORNER - a work that Beuys made several times with piles of cold fat forced into a gallery corner. This example is signed by Beuys in black felt tipped pen on the front over the image. VG+.

...

Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1972
28 x 20cm, 58pp. Boards with printed title. An anthology of concrete poems (in part designed by Michael Harvey) with a section dedicated to sundials. This is the second US publication (After the Something Else Press publication the year before. This is one of 200 signed and numbered copies aside from the 1,000 unnumbered copies. VG+. ...

Paris: Edition Multiplicata, 1972
21 x 13.5cm, 20pp plus card wrappers. First edition of this artist's book that supposedly shows ten different portraits of the younger Boltanski from the age of 3 to age 20. All but the last of the children photographed are not Boltanski but friends and relatives (Christophe Boltanski the artist's nephew is one of the models) and were all taken by Annette Messager on a single day inJuly 1972. The last image is of Boltanski supposedly at 20 years of age but when the photograph was taken he was 28. Yet another example of the fictionalism of the artist's work - history is erroneous and cannot be trusted. Nor can artists although on the back page the date of the photography is revealed so at least the deception was only temporary for the careful reader. VG+ condition.
Referenced in Flay Christian Boltanski Catalogue 1992, Page 74.

...

Hamburg/Paris: Grossman Verlag/Edition Sonnabend, 1972
20.8 x 14.6cm, 32pp plus card covers. Thirty-two b/w images of the adult artist recreating his early life as a young child with descriptions which ignore the fact that Boltanski is not a child. The photographs were all taken by Annette Messager. This is one of 500 copies published. The cover has a couple of brown marks (possible foxing) else VG+.
JOINT:
Two 19 x 12.5cm, 1pp b/w inserts with English and French translations of the legends.

...

Fontainebleau: Musee Municipal Du Costume Militaire, 1972
10.5 x 15cm, 2pp typographic announcement card for a joint show with Jean Le Gac.
On the reverse is an important joint text by the artists which stresses the reasons why they were exhibiting in such a historic museum:

Our work is an attempt to find in the present the means to transmit and preserve the experience that we have of artistic activity: an intellectual journey, marked out by relics (photos, objects, fragments of texts ...

Shopping cart0
There are no products in the cart!
Continue shopping