Christian Boltanski

Christian Boltanski

   Christian Boltanski was born in Paris in 1944. His artistic career began when he left formal education at the age of 12, at which point he started painting and drawing. Since the 1960s, he has worked with the ephemera of the human experience, from obituary photographs to rusted biscuit tins. Several of Boltanski's projects have used actual lost property from public spaces.

    Boltanski has a very strange view on art that I think sounds fantastic. He believes that an artist should be lazy. His way of working is just hanging around waiting until some creative idea hits you, then he makes it happen in ten minutes. this works very well for my own way of life. In the mid 80's, Boltanski started doing museum-like installments with light as the essential concept. He takes old photos of people and tin boxes as you can see in the picutre above. "Chases School" has photos of jewish children from the 30's to sort of recreate history and bring a new light on the holocaust. Boltanski says,  "My work is about the fact of dying, but it's not about the Holocaust itself."