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Christian Boltanski(born 1944)L'Ecole de la Grosse Hamburger Strabe, en 1938, 1991
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Merryn Schriever
Managing Director, Australia

Alex Clark
Head of Sale, Senior Specialist
Christian Boltanski (born 1944)
signed and numbered to artists label on lid interior:'C.Boltanksi 34/40'
edition of 40
metal tin, photograph, cloth, tape and litho pencil
20.3 x 22.9cm (8 x 9in).
Footnotes
PROVENANCE
New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, 2010
The Gene & Brian Sherman Collection, Sydney
Artist Christian Boltanski has frequently relied on the photograph's deceptive capacity to function as an "authentic" trace—a convincing souvenir—of personal experience. The artificially aged tin biscuit box in L'Ecole de la Grosse Hamburger Strasse en 1938 also suggests—along with a pre-war snapshot of German schoolgirls—an authentic, archaeological find. A part of a group photograph has been hand-marked, enlarged and shrouded with an aureole of white cloth; each tin in the edition contains a different enlargement. Everything, the artist points out, has the power to connote; the more prosaic the object, the more profound the connotation can be.
























