Boltanski Christian Quotes & Sayings

We all die twice - once when we actually die and once when no one on earth recognizes our photograph. — Christian Boltanski

The sole fact of having a school to train creative people is absolute lunacy ... The idea of 'pedagogical vision' is ignoble, it has nothing to do with art, it's contrary to art. I really believe in teaching, despite what I say. — Christian Boltanski

Here dwells a snake, one thousand miles long
Coiled, one thousand miles deep
Eyes like candy, it has eyes like candy
Hard and blue, but soft as kittens feet
Out of sight or in the element of light
It could be a devil, it could be an angel
With spiders inside a vision from hell
Its spine is a vertical scream
Slow as concrete, blurred as a dream
Fueled by inertia, depth, radius, and velocity,
Its soul
a twisted wreckage of despair and pain
And the spiders inside are just praying for rain
Killing time killing time
And praying for rain
One thousand miles deep — James O'Barr

The photo replaces the memory. When someone dies, after a while you can't visualize them anymore, you only remember them through their pictures. — Christian Boltanski

In the democracy of the dead all men at last are equal. There is neither rank nor station nor prerogative in the republic of the grave. — John James Ingalls

There are many disturbing news. We believe that the production of conventional petroleum reached peak oil already in 2006. The oil fields in the North Sea and the US are collapsing ... time is running out. — Fatih Birol

The more you work, the less you exist. I believe (at least, I used to believe, because I no longer think this is entirely true) that the artist is like someone carrying a mirror in which everyone can look and recognize themselves, so that the person who carries the mirror ends up being nothing. — Christian Boltanski

I was lucky to be born during the time of minimalism. I think I can be colder because of this. In form I speak with minimalism but my feeling is sentimental - I am a sentimental minimalist. — Christian Boltanski

In most of my photographic pieces I have manipulated the quality of the evidence that people assign to photography, in order to subvert it, or to show that photography lies - that what it conveys is not reality but a set of cultural codes. — Christian Boltanski

Every time I ask questions about sex, I always end up asking questions about death. — Christian Boltanski

I like looking at the finger of God. Why it takes one and not another, why this one or that one, why now or why then. The finger of God is always on us. When you get older and you see your friends dying around you, you say "Why not me?" That machine is always there. — Christian Boltanski

You are what you are because your parents made love at that exact moment, and if they made love one second after you would be different. — Christian Boltanski

The science about life is very optimistic. Every second, four people in the world die, and six are born. This is optimistic. — Christian Boltanski

If one hasn't been through, as our people mercifully did not go through, the horrors of an occupation by a foreign power, you have no right to pronounce upon what a country does, which has been through all that. — Anthony Eden

The stony silence of death,
trapped by the original gravity of our sins,
and the perpetuity of a long, leisurely yawn,
a world where blood and bone no longer matter. — Brian D'Ambrosio

I think that all human activity is stupid. Artistic activity is also stupid, but you can see it more clearly. — Christian Boltanski

I believe that at the beginning of the life of every artist there is some kind of trauma. We have a problem and all of our life we try to speak about this problem. My trauma was historical. When I was three or four, all the friends of my parents were survivors of the Holocaust; they spoke a lot about that. My father was hiding during the war, it was something totally present when I was a boy. It is sure that it has made me. — Christian Boltanski

The fact that you were born means that there are no other children born because of you - you've killed them in a way. — Christian Boltanski

It's pretentious to say, but my art is like a little Zen story, a story with a question mark at the end. People can take from it what they need. If somebody says, "Your art is very funny," I say, "You are totally right." If somebody says, "Your art is very sad," I say, "You are totally right." In Japan they say, "Your art is very Japanese, you even look Japanese.Your great-grandfather was most surely a Japanese man." And I say, "You are totally right." — Christian Boltanski

Art-making is not about telling the truth but making the truth felt — Christian Boltanski

There are very few times in creation in your life. One time is when you become an adult, one time is when your parents die, and the other time is when you are very old. — Christian Boltanski

In science we see progress. In art there is no progress. In art the questions have always been the same. From the beginning of time till now, we are always asking the same questions. There are very few. We are looking for God, we are asking why we die, we are contemplating sex and the beauty of nature. The only thing that changes is that, in each period of questioning, we speak with the language of our time. — Christian Boltanski

Photography is used to give evidence, and the evidence is always deceiving. — Christian Boltanski

There is nothing more precious to a parent than a child, and nothing more important to our future than the safety of all our children. — William J. Clinton

Indian enterprises seemed to work so well they produced disasters; success made them burst at the seams and the disruption of unprecedented orders led to shortages and finally failure. — Paul Theroux

A general curiosity about the unknown sparked by the multicultural milieu in which I spent my formative years. There was a lot of unknown back then, too. I dare say it was easier to be an explorer then. — Herodotus

We're painting the same people all our life - it's just the way we look at them that changes. If you experience trauma, you can speak about it in so many different ways. You can speak about landscape, you can speak about your food; it's always different. Trauma is the beginning of life as an artist. — Christian Boltanski

I've filled my whole life trying to preserve the memory of living, in the fight against dying. Perhaps the only thing I've done, since stopping death is impossible, is to show this fight. The fight itself does not satisfy us either. — Christian Boltanski

You know, I think Chris Nolan is an incredibly intelligent filmmaker, and I think Leonardo DiCaprio is an incredibly talented actor. — Ryan Kavanaugh

Youth need less critics and more models. — Thomas S. Monson

For society, the Internet is wonderful, but for capitalists, it will be a net negative. It will increase efficiency, but lots of things increase efficiency without increasing profits. It is way more likely to make American businesses less profitable than more profitable. This is perfectly obvious, but very little understood. — Charlie Munger

I never take photographs myself. I don't feel like a photographer, more like a recycler — Christian Boltanski

One of my favourite exhibitions is called 'Do It,' which I co-curated with the artists Christian Boltanski and Bertrand Lavier 21 years ago. — Hans Ulrich Obrist

When I was four or five years old, I heard a lot of stories about the Holocaust because both my parents were survivors. I'm sure that was very important in my life. My father snuck out from under the floorboards to make love to my mother. I can't imagine why they kept me. — Christian Boltanski

I think it is very important to know that we are going to die. Now we refuse the fact of dying. There was once serenity in dying where you had all your children around you in a ceremony and would utter your last words with something like, 'I love the sky'. — Christian Boltanski

More than that, the thought rattled uncomfortably in my child brain that I would one day become one of them. My body then was sexless. Though I had seen the curves of adults, I couldn't fathom the chrysalis that would turn my featureless body into something with heft and gravity, curves and the inclination to use them. — Valentine Glass