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Lot Essay
In 1970, Christian Boltanski began a series of works with the generic title "Vitrine de Référence". Using museum-style display cases, he organised, catalogued and archived examples of his own earlier works made since 1969 alongside black-and-white photographs of anonymous people appropriated from popular magazines and other relics, or "pieces of evidence", including human hair, balls of dirt or handmade knives and other tools. Each item was then carefully identified with typed labels placed alongside them as though in a museum exhibition.
The late 1960s and early 1970s saw an upsurge of art devoted to an investigation of nature (Land Art) and the anthropology of everyday life (Spurensicherung). In an interview with Delphine Renard, Boltanski recalled: "The Musée de l'Homme was of tremendous importance to me; it was there that I saw large metal and glass vitrines in which were placed small, fragile, and insignificant objects. A yellowed photograph showing a 'savage' handling his little objects was often placed in the corner of the vitrine. Each vitrine presented a lost world: the savage in the photograph was most likely dead; the objects had become useless - anyway there's no one left who knows how to use them. The Musée de l'Homme seemed like a big morgue to me." (L. Gumpert, 'Christian Boltanski', Paris 1994, p.32).
By feigning a museum-like atmosphere, Boltanski places a barrier between himself and the work, allowing him to present his ideas as pseudo-objective facts. In the present work, for example, the viewer assumes that a direct connection exists between the photographic portraits and the envelopes of human hair. Are the objects in the vitrine evidence of a crime, and if so, what crime was actually committed? For all his quasi-scientific thoroughness, the artist provides no clue of what, if anything, actually took place.
The late 1960s and early 1970s saw an upsurge of art devoted to an investigation of nature (Land Art) and the anthropology of everyday life (Spurensicherung). In an interview with Delphine Renard, Boltanski recalled: "The Musée de l'Homme was of tremendous importance to me; it was there that I saw large metal and glass vitrines in which were placed small, fragile, and insignificant objects. A yellowed photograph showing a 'savage' handling his little objects was often placed in the corner of the vitrine. Each vitrine presented a lost world: the savage in the photograph was most likely dead; the objects had become useless - anyway there's no one left who knows how to use them. The Musée de l'Homme seemed like a big morgue to me." (L. Gumpert, 'Christian Boltanski', Paris 1994, p.32).
By feigning a museum-like atmosphere, Boltanski places a barrier between himself and the work, allowing him to present his ideas as pseudo-objective facts. In the present work, for example, the viewer assumes that a direct connection exists between the photographic portraits and the envelopes of human hair. Are the objects in the vitrine evidence of a crime, and if so, what crime was actually committed? For all his quasi-scientific thoroughness, the artist provides no clue of what, if anything, actually took place.