CHRISTIAN BOLTANSKI: LES MODELES: CINQ RELATIONS ENTRE TEXTE & IMAGE

Paris, France: Cheval Books, 1979. First Edition. First Printing.. Softcover. Fine/No Dust Jacket, As Issued.. Paris, France: Cheval Books, 1979. Softcover. Fine/None, As Issued. First Edition/First Printing. 45 pages. Retrospective Monograph on subject. One of the earliest retrospectives on the art and achievement of Christian Boltanski. The first and only edition. Published in a small and limited print run as a softcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. An austerely elegant production by Cheval Books: Regular-sized volume format. Pictorial softcovers with titles on the cover and spine, as issued. Art by Christian Boltanski. Text/Interview by Christian Besson. Printed on pristine-white, thick coated stock paper in Paris to the highest standards. Without DJ, as issued. Published on the occasion of the landmark retrospective exhibition of the same name held at the Maison de la Culture de Chalon-sur-Saone from December 8, 1979 through January 20, 1980. Presents Christian Boltanski's "Les Modeles: Cinq Relations Entre Text & Image". Five relations between text and image. Brings together five of the artist's key works between 1973 and 1978, in which Christian Boltanski uses words as images and then re-imagines archival photographs as images that carry the burden of words. Every word is the result of human thought. Thought preceded and invented meaningful sound that is, verbal and written language, in order to communicate, express, and elicit a response. Still, image preceded language. In the beginning was the image, NOT the word. One of the most important projects of Modern Art has been to appropriate and re-imagine words as images. Boltanski anticipated contemporary figures like Ed Ruscha and Richard Prince, among others, in this respect. Since his death on July 14, 2021, tributes to Christian Boltanski focussed exclusively on his site-specific installations, 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 front free endpaper 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 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 2862000159.