Christian Boltanski

Christian Boltanski is one of the most important European contemporary artists working today, masterful at staging rooms and situations. His work in photography and installation, among other mediums, evokes primary concerns of human existence like lifespan, identity, body, death and legacy: how will we be remembered? Christian Boltanski documents the artist's first comprehensive solo show in Germany after more than 10 years, which connects existing pieces with new creations in a unique installation transcending time and architecture. This monograph fathoms and examines the singular echo space of Christian Boltanski's art in philosophical, literary and art-historical essays by such well-known authors as Aleida Assmann and Ralf Beil, and is rounded off by an interview with the artist.

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).