‘At Once Funny and Melancholic’: Remembering Christian Boltanski (1944–2021)

Marie Darrieussecq | ArtReview | 16th July 2021

The traumas of WWII haunted Boltanski’s art. Not the deaths of specific individuals but memory and how it works. Self taught, his conceptual art took many forms – film, installations, site-specific works, sculpture – and was widely acclaimed. Explaining works in his 2019 Paris retrospective, he said “I want to create legends and mythology … it’s not about the object it’s about being aware of its existence.”