CHRISTIAN BOLTANSKI

Christian Boltanski
A illuminating look at the affecting work of one of France's premier artists.Survey by Didier Semin, Interview by Tamar Garb, Focus by Donald Kuspit, Artist's Choice text by Georges Perec, Writings by Christian Boltanski

Christian Boltanski (b.1945), one of France's most important contemporary artists, evades definition
His magical work, which has been presented in museums worldwide, memorializes ordinary people, often in installations that combine dramatic illumination and darkness
Boltanski gathers old photos, clothes and personal objects, presenting them as archival artefacts tracing individual lives

Didier Semin is Professor or Art History at the Ecole nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He is a regular contributor to Art Press and Beaux Arts Magazine, and his books include Boltanski (1988) and Arte Povera (1992).

Tamar Garb is a critic and historian of nineteenth- and twentieth-century visual culture and Professor of Art History at University College London. Her books include Sisters of the Brush: Women's Artistic Culture in Late 19th Century France (1994), The Jew in the Text: Modernity and the Construction of Identity (co-edited with Linda Nochlin, 1995) and Bodies of Modernity (1998).

Donald Kuspit is Professor of Art History and Philosophy at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. His books include The Cult of the Avant Garde Artist (1993), Idiosyncratic Identities: Artists at the End of the Avant-Garde (1996) and The End of Art (2004).