BOLTANSKI'S MYSTERIOUS MONUMENT

Monument

BOLTANSKI’S MYSTERIOUS MONUMENT

by Sydney Greaves and Diane Tichell

From the moment of its 2004 installation, Monument by French artist Christian Boltanski has prompted many questions.  Who are the children in the photographs?  Does this piece refer to the Holocaust and WWII?  Why did the artist use bare wires and old-fashioned light bulbs?  We may be able to provide a few answers, or at least  ideas…

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Christian Boltanski was born in Paris in 1944 to a Corsican mother and a Christian-converted Jewish father.  As an artist his earlier work dealt with photography, film and installations.  In a 1984 interview he first publicly acknowledged his Jewish heritage, which would become an influence on his subsequent work.  Called “death-obsessed” by some, his post-1984 works explore the use of photographic images and materials, anonymous and out of context, as objects of memory: public and private, real and imagined.

Monument is one of a series of installations that explore identity and memory by utilizing delicate, impermanent materials such as photographs and wrapping paper as well as mundane objects like clothing, paper, found objects and lost property.  The small scale and everyday nature of Boltanski’s intimate installations contradict the accepted concept of a monument as a way to preserve memory.  The very word monument conjures up images of magnificent bronzes and marbles of suitably “monumental” size, and it is these contradictions that are a hallmark of Boltanski’s Monument series.

Our Monument consists of very basic materials; fifty-six small metal “picture frames” are individually mounted on the wall with adhesive Velcro in a stair-step, tall, triangular arrangement.   Each “picture” consists of paper, backed with thin cardboard, covered with glass and mounted in the frame using masking tape. Eleven small, old-style light bulbs connected by dangling wires sit on the “riser” of each step all the way to the top center. 

Of the 56 frames, 48 show a black speckle-patterned paper, the outer frames in a gold or tan color, the interior divided between blue on the left and gray on the right.  The eight remaining frames feature photographs.  The very top photo is the only color photo in the installation and features a scene of purplish-pink tulips in a garden.  An additional two photographs, arranged at the bottom left and right respectively, feature one little boy at full length and two children together.  Arranged in pairs in the interior of the triangle are four black and white, extreme close-up photographs of children’s faces, slightly blurry as if enlarged from very small old originals.

Many of Boltanski’s monuments have been described as resembling the structure of a Christian altar.  (Think of the MAG’s Gothic, Byzantine and Renaissance icons and altarpieces, especially Madonna and Child Enthroned Between

Six Saints and Angels, 27.1.)  S ome “altars” have a large central shape flanked by smaller ones on each side, while others, like ours, have a triangular stair-step arrangement.  All share the candle-like use of a series of small bare light bulbs, gently illuminating the installation and enhancing the religious nature of the space. The bare wires, draped and dangling in front of the photographs, serve not only an obvious electrical function (supplying power to the light bulbs) but unite the various elements of the work in a casual, home-made fashion, as if roughly constructed with materials at hand.

The haunting, blurry old photographs of Boltanski’s monuments come from various sources, such as photo archives, borrowed family albums, found objects and miscellaneous collections.  Many feature the close-up faces of children, obviously from another era.  In the context of the shrine-like installations, questions arise again:  Who are these children?  Do we know their names?   Are they alive or dead?  Did they die in the Holocaust, memorialized here as representative of the millions of others?  Perhaps comments from the artist himself provide something of an answer:

 “I never speak directly about the Holocaust in my work, but of course my work comes after the Holocaust.”    (1999 interview)

“I have never used images from the [concentration] camps.  My work is not about, it is after.”                               (1997 interview)

In other words, Boltanski relies on our collective cultural memory surrounding the events of WWII, knowing that our knowledge of the Holocaust inevitably colors our viewing of Monument.  We add up the elements:  shrine-like configuration, “candle” light, poignant old photographs of children, and of course the title Monument itself, and then use these to draw our own conclusions.  Those conclusions may reflect the intended effect of the work, or not, but …

[that effect] “has to be ‘unfocused’ somehow so that everyone can recognize something of their own self when viewing it.”

 (1999 interview)

In the end, the experience and reaction of the viewer, both individual and collective, is as integral to Monument as the photographs and light bulbs. Whether we stand in front of Monument and “see” a Holocaust memorial or, conversely, a  Birthday Cake or  Christmas Tree, as some child visitors have suggested, we are indeed heading in the right direction.  That recognition from something of your own experience,  be it historical memory, personal connection or contextual interpretation, is itself The Right Answer.

Sources:

Curatorial Files, 

Wired Image:  Ben Armstrong, The Installation of Monument: The

     Children of Dijon at Chapelle de la Salpetriere, Paris, 1986

     http://www.wiredimage.co.uk/archive/wiredimage/chapt5.html

frenchculture.org: Visual Arts, Christian Boltanski: “Coming and Going”

     Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, Feb 21-Apr 14, 2001

Tate Magazine, issue 2, Studio: Christian Boltanski

httpL//www.tate.org.uk/magazine/issue/boltanski..htm