[PDF] HISTOIRE DES ARTS Christian Boltanski, Personnes, 2010

Overview

By Sunanda K. Sanyal

Coming of age after the Second World War

Christian Boltanski who died in 2021 remains one of the leading figures in conceptual art. His consistent pursuit of disturbing yet profound existential questions presented in a variety of installations has captivated his audience for more than five decades. Fascinated by the universality of death and the fragility of human existence, Boltanski was preoccupied throughout his career with notions of memory, loss, identity, and biography. Though he usually identified as a painter, he worked with a wide range of objects, materials, and modes of representation. The subjects and ideas fundamental to his projects—including Personnes—have their roots in his family and his coming of age in the years following the Second World War.

Existential questions

Growing up, Boltanski was influenced by the dominant philosophy of the time. Following the devastating destruction of World War II, the Holocaust, and atomic bombs, Existentialism became highly influential among European intellectuals. The writings of French thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvoir and others harshly critiqued the ideals of the Enlightenment, which had thus far been considered the bedrock principles of European and American modernity. In the post-war period, the Enlightenment values of the essential nobility of the human body and mind, rationality, progress, redemption, and the crucial role of posterity in enhancing human legacies were challenged in favor of the primacy of individual free will. For the Existentialists, the dark reality of the war, the bombs, and the Holocaust shattered the traditional belief in destiny, replacing it with the unsettling notion of chance and the dismantling of the inevitability of progress. This worldview made a permanent impact on Boltanski’s creative work.

Personal archive

Without any formal schooling in art, Boltanski, too, made the archival principle central to his art. For him, artifacts left behind had the potential to be a personal archive; such objects, he claimed, evoked the absent subject. He therefore regarded albums of family photographs, clothing or any such possessions as components of a biography waiting to be reconstructed. Underscoring the loss of biography by focusing on archival remains that were disassociated from their origins was important to Boltanski and an expression of his interest in the fragility of memory. It was his way of restoring the erased humanity of victims of collective traumas. His attraction to the archive, along with his exploration of the complex relationship between individual identity and the human multitude, and his interest in the role of chance in life and death converge into Personnes, his largest installation.

A contradiction

In French, “personnes” has two contrary meanings; depending on context, it can either mean “people” or “nobodies”. This opposing duality pervades the project. Unlike Reserve Canada, this installation with around fifty tons of clothes has an ominous ambience that affects many visitors. The crane repeatedly picking up garments from the mound and dropping them becomes a disturbing reference to the film footage shot by the Allied forces at the liberated concentration camps in 1945 of massive piles of corpses being loaded on trucks and bulldozed into mass graves. In fact, the separated rectangular spaces on the floor of the Grand Palais immediately recall such graves where bodies are commingled and individual existence is forever erased; a genocidal arena where one becomes “nobody.” What is more, Boltanski deliberately left the exhibition venue unheated because he wanted to exacerbate the unease of visitors in a Paris winter, aiming for a heightened psychological impact.

Collective trauma

Belief in chance is perhaps Boltanski’s strongest link to Existentialism. Existentialists unequivocally rejected the view that the victims, including children, of the Holocaust or any other genocide were destined to die. Destiny was to them, a cruel, and more importantly, irrational position. Instead, chance became a dominant theme in their effort to understand collective traumas. Boltanski deeply reflected on the role of chance in life, including survivor’s guilt, where a survivor of a tragedy painfully wonders why they, and not the others, escaped death. The dominant component in Personnes that underscores chance is the action of the crane. While the mechanism resembles the robotic claw used to pick up st? dolls from a glass case at an arcade, its enormity in the installation makes it a dystopian giant toying with human remains—"the hand of God,” as Boltanski observed. Watching the crane’s repetitive action of randomly grabbing clothes and callously releasing them from its clutch, one becomes acutely aware of the active role of chance in the process, especially since the machine picks up a different quantity of clothes each time. Furthermore, while some of the stacked biscuit tins contain personal artifacts, a visitor never knows which ones do, as all of them are impersonally marked with a number.

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Que se passe-t-il à l’exposition de Christian Boltanski ?

Selon la volonté de l’artiste, les éléments qui la constituent seront recyclés à l’issue de l’exposition. Les oeuvres de Christian Boltanski s’adressent à tous, elles interpellent et ébranlent. Sous la Nef du Grand Palais, le visiteur oublie toute référence muséale, il fait corps avec la scène vivante de l’art et de la mémoire.

Quel est le passé de Christian Boltanski ?

De plus si nous nous plongeons dans le passé de Christian Boltanski nous découvrons que de nombreux membres de sa famille on été déportés durant la seconde guerre mondiale. Cette partie de son histoire est un moteur pour son travail , il aborde régulièrement les thématiques de l’histoire, la mémoire et la mort.

Quels sont les gestes de reprise de Christian Boltanski ?

Christian Boltanski n’a de cesse d’appeler de ses vœux de tels gestes de reprises : rejouer ses oeuvres, les réincarner autrement, en oubliant la lettre mais en gardant l’esprit, serait une manière de les faire exister. Et il ouvre la voie qui mène à ces reprises.

Qu'est-ce que l'installation de Christian Boltanski ?

Voici la description de l’installation « PERSONNES » de Christian Boltanski qui se déroula en 2010, dans le cadre du projet « Monumenta ». L’initiative Monumenta a pour but d’inviter un artiste contemporain à investir les nefs du Grand Palais, à Paris, toutes les années paires.

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Fiche Histoire des Arts 3ème Thématique : -Arts et Mémoire

Titre : Monumenta 2010 Personnes. Nom de l'artiste : Christian BOLTANSKI. Année : 13/01/2010 ou 21/02/2010. Dimensions 



HISTOIRE DES ARTS Christian Boltanski Personnes

http://data.over-blog-kiwi.com/0/56/37/77/20140318/ob_9cf162_personnes-prof.pdf



Personnes

Personnes est une installation réalisée par Christian Boltanski en Janvier-Février 2010. Elle occupe tout l'espace du Grand Palais à Paris.



Christian Boltanski

Document Histoire des arts/Arts plastiques Christian Boltanski « Personnes » 2010 : Oeuvre exposée dans la nef du Grand Palais à Paris.



ANALYSE DE LŒUVRE « Personnes » de Christian BOLTANSKI I

Monumenta* : c'est une exposition d'art contemporain qui chaque année propose à un artiste de renommée internationale de créer une œuvre inspirée par la nef 



Collège PERRINON - HISTOIRE DES ARTS Objet détude 2018

Histoire-Géographie. Personnes 2010 - Christian BOLTANSKI. Arts plastiques. La complainte du progrès



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MONUMENTA 2010 / Christian Boltanski - Personnes Jugement dernier ce thème classique de l'histoire de l'art qui a donné lieu aux spéculations.



HISTOIRE DES ARTS/TROISIEME / 2011-2012/ COLLEGE SAINT

HISTOIRE DES ARTS/TROISIEME / 2011-2012/ COLLEGE SAINT JOSEPH / GAILLAC. Christian BOLTANSKI « Personnes » 2010



Monumenta 2010 Actions de médiation.indd

individuelle à la grande histoire. Au travers d'un art pourvu d'un fort pouvoir émotionnel. Christian Boltanski est narrateur et chroniqueur.



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Nom de l'artiste : Christian BOLTANSKI. Titre de l'oeuvre : personnes. Date et lieu de réalisation : 2010 au Grand palais. (Paris).