Christian Boltanski

Christian Boltanski was born on this day in 1944. 

Christian Boltanski, RIP

Christian Boltanski died yesterday in his hometown of Paris, at the age of seventy-six. 

Christian Boltanski | Le Lycée Chases

Christian Boltanski
Le Lycée Chases
Düsseldorf, Germany: Kunstverein für Rheinland und Westfalen, 1987
62 pp., 29.5 x 20.8 cm., boxed
Edition of 18 signed and numbered copies

Published on the occasion of the exhibition of Christian Boltanski in the Kunstverein for the Rhineland and Westphalia, Düsseldorf, from August 29 to October 11, 1987, this artist's book features eighteen reproduced photographs of the pupils of the final class at the Lycée Chases in Vienna in 1931, on black tracing paper. It is accompanied by a gelatin silver print and a text by Jiri Svestka, and is housed in a metal box.

Available from Copyright Bookstore for €5000, here.

Christian Boltanski | El Caso

Christian Boltanski
El Caso
Zürich, Switzerland: Parkett, 1989
[18 pp.], 5 x 8 x 0.6 cm., ringbound
Edition of 100 signed and numbered copies

Produced as an edition for the 22nd issue of Parkett magazine, El Caso features images of victims of brutally violent crime. Boltanski rephotographed the corpses from Spanish detective magazine El Caso. The glossy photos and the perspex cover are held together with two metal rings. The work is signed and numbered in pencil on the last page, out of 80 (an additional 20 copies were numbered in Roman numerals).


"Luxury edition of a booklet with real glossy photographs, small enough to be hidden behind the hand... It pictures the bodies of victims of violent crime. By showing these photographs of half-naked corpses, bought nearer by close-up shots, the artist transforms the viewer into a voyeur who virtually becomes a sadistic partner in the crime."

- Catalogue: Books, Printed Matter, Ephemera 1966-1991.

“There is in the work of the artist something of the high priest and something of the charlatan. Boltanski transforms shards of nothing into art, bits of cardboard, lumps of sugar, old photos, but plays the game of showing us that his transformation is also mere illusion, that this art is also the nothing or next to nothing from which it has sprung.”

- Didier Semin 

Christian Boltanski | Inventory of the objects belonging to an inhabitant of Oxford

Christian Boltanski
Inventory of the objects belonging to an inhabitant of Oxford
Münster, Germany: Westfälischer Kunstverein, 1973
80 pp., 20.7 x 15 cm., softcover
Edition size unknown

Full title: Inventory of the objects belonging to an inhabitant of Oxford introduced by a preface and followed by some answers to my proposal.

Christian Boltanski | Reconstitution

Christian Boltanski
Reconstitution
Karlsruhe, Germany/Paris France: Badischer Kunstverein / Le Chêne, 1978
123 pp., 24.5 x 20.8 cm.,  softcover
Edition size unknown

Christian Boltanski | Passie / Passion

Christian Boltanski
Passie / Passion
Tilburg, The Netherlands: Museum De Pont, 1996
4 pp., 39 x 58 cm., loose leaves, slip band
Edition size unknown

A catalogue in the form of a tabloid newspaper. Four folded sheets printed in black-and-white recto and verso, depicting staring eyes, held together in a mailing band.