CHRISTIAN BOLTANSKI: INVENTAR

Hamburger, Germany: Hamburger Kunsthalle, 1991. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. As New/No Dust Jacket, As Issued.. Hamburger, Germany: Hamburger Kunsthalle, 1991. Hardcover. As New/None, As Issued. First Edition/First Printing. 136 pages. Retrospective Monograph on subject. One of the most valuable and beautiful retrospectives on the art and achievement of Christian Boltanski. The first and only edition. Published in a small and limited print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. An austerely elegant production by Christian Boltanski and Peter Wehr: Regular-sized volume format. Brown cloth boards with white titles on the cover and spine, as issued. Art by Christian Boltanski. Text by various German contributors: Scholars, art historians, and specialists on Boltanski. Printed on pristine-white, thick coated stock paper in Germany to the highest standards. The reproduction quality is exemplary in every respect. Without DJ, as issued. Published on the occasion of the landmark retrospective exhibition of the same name held at the Hamburger Kunsthalle in 1991. Presents Christian Boltanski's "Inventar". Inventory, THE key Boltanski concept. Brings together all of the artist's major site-specific installations, re-contextualized by him in one of his most massive retrospective exhibitions. Now-archival photographs of the exhibition and the artist at work, while assembling them, make this volume an important document for an informed appreciation of Christian Boltanski's body of work. Since his death on July 14, 2021, tributes to Christian Boltanski focussed exclusively on his site-specific installations, so beautifully shown in this volume, completely ignoring his two other incomparable achievements: First, the series of short films that he filmed, in each of which an "accident" takes place, and he dies. Boltanski stored the films in vintage biscuit tin cans, which he salvaged, accumulating endless rows of them, a "throwaway", quotidian artifact that he single-handedly elevated to an art object - therefore as something sacred - and now feverishly coveted as such by collectors. Second, Boltanski's large body of work in the Artist Book genre will remain unsurpassed, perhaps matched only by Ed Ruscha's, sort of, and in a totally different vein. Now that he is dead, the grief one feels for the vanished Life is somehow mitigated by the timeless beauty of the Art. An absolute "must-have" title for Christian Boltanski collectors. This copy is very prominently, neatly, and beautifully signed in pencil on the title page by Christian Boltanski. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. This title is a late-modern art classic. As far as we know, this is the only such signed copy of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. A rare signed copy thus. Lavishly illustrated with black-and-white and color plates. One of the greatest artists of the 20th century and our time. A fine collectible copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER CHRISTIAN BOLTANSKI TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 3922909027.