Essai de reconstitution (Trois tiroirs) Attempt at Recreation (Three Drawers)], 1970-1971
Formerly Trois Tiroirs (Three Drawers).
A tin-plate chest containing three drawers held shut with wire netting, each sporting a label and containing various objects.
This three-drawer tin-plate chest epitomises Boltanski’s early ventures into the theme of lost child hood. He wrote his first book, “Recherche et présentation de tout ce qui reste de mon enfance, 1944-1950” (Investigation and presen tation of all that is left of my childhood, 1944-1950) (1) in 1969.
He originally only published 50 copies of this book which was, in a way, an attempt to recreate a period of his childhood and present the result as a work of art. Its nine pages contain a school photo and essay, and keepsakes that remind us of the bits and pieces we might have stored away caringly in cardboard boxes.
Trois tiroirs is a similar – but more three-dimensional recreation. The drawers contain plasticine objects replicating things which, as the typed labels on each drawer tell us, Boltanski probably had as a child (planes, a hot-water bottle and so on). They are his way of reminding us of those inconsequential treasures we prized and cherished as children.
This recreation also captures something of the earnest seriousness that childhood games somehow involve, making it both funny and endearing.
It also foreshadows a series of archive works that Boltanski produced in the 1980s (2). Those, again, feature the same tin-plate chests full of unpretentious, commercially worthless objects encapsulating an undeniably huge wealth of private emotion-steeped memories.
Formerly Trois Tiroirs (Three Drawers).
A tin-plate chest containing three drawers held shut with wire netting, each sporting a label and containing various objects.
This three-drawer tin-plate chest epitomises Boltanski’s early ventures into the theme of lost child hood. He wrote his first book, “Recherche et présentation de tout ce qui reste de mon enfance, 1944-1950” (Investigation and presen tation of all that is left of my childhood, 1944-1950) (1) in 1969.
He originally only published 50 copies of this book which was, in a way, an attempt to recreate a period of his childhood and present the result as a work of art. Its nine pages contain a school photo and essay, and keepsakes that remind us of the bits and pieces we might have stored away caringly in cardboard boxes.
Trois tiroirs is a similar – but more three-dimensional recreation. The drawers contain plasticine objects replicating things which, as the typed labels on each drawer tell us, Boltanski probably had as a child (planes, a hot-water bottle and so on). They are his way of reminding us of those inconsequential treasures we prized and cherished as children.
This recreation also captures something of the earnest seriousness that childhood games somehow involve, making it both funny and endearing.
It also foreshadows a series of archive works that Boltanski produced in the 1980s (2). Those, again, feature the same tin-plate chests full of unpretentious, commercially worthless objects encapsulating an undeniably huge wealth of private emotion-steeped memories.
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