Le Voyage de Noces à Venise- Annette Messager et Christian Boltanski

If Christian Boltanski is considered as one of the most contemporary artists of contemporary expression the artist claim to be recognise as a traditional painter.His ability to mix his personal past, real or fictional, dramatic or comic, an object's past or the entire humanity's one commute us into a meditation space and provoke our collective memory.

I take the opportunity of being in Venice to talk about a forgotten project Boltanski and Annette Messager shared in 1975. Boltanski was invited to present his 'individual mythologies' and Messager packed and follow him. During two months they decided to behave as if they were on honey moon.

Through this project they questioned cultural codes and common places realizing 21 sketches and photographs. It is Boltanski's first use of color photography.

I knew this work before coming here and I did'nt find it neither interesting nor relevant but I have to say that I realized by living here its strength. Observing people bulimic of images they will keep for the rest of their life on the console table of the living room, acting as if they were playing the best scene of their lives. I have stopped counting how many times a couple asked me for a picture, or how many bridges are painted in watercolors by lovers; this are standard sketches. Boltanski & Messager analysed from the inside the behavior a couple is supposed to take as soon as they appear in the Venitian decor.

"Venice is a fake city, a tourist city with no spirit" that's exactly what I was prepared to and I will leave it with the feeling of having experienced four months in a true place, with true feelings, a true picture of what the outside world want to sample. I only have 4 weeks left and a lot of work, I will definitely miss Venice. My princess life, my street' small shopkeepers , the owner of the restaurant under my appartement who always offer me the desert and the prosecco glass, the waiter on Campo Santa Margherita who market me his 'pasta-gnocchi-pizza' at 10 a.m on my walk to school and the vegetables merchant on his boat shop that follow the water's flux.

Quand on sature le symbole, il perd de son sens.

21 fois le fameux petit restaurant de poisson,

21 fois l'extase du matin,

il y a comme une lassitude,

une industrie du tourisme de rêve nuptial

qui ferait comme un rejet,

une subite envie de vomir,

le Venise des cartes postales

des jeunes couples en recherche de sens,

vous avez beau creuser,

vous ne trouvez que non-sense,

mais au détour, vous repérez

que la beauté nue sur le lit

vous fait vaguement penser à un peintre fameux,

le pastel du restaurant de poisson

met en oeuvre un outil

d'ordinaire davantage dédié au paysage,

et puis qui dresse le cadre de la tendre promesse,

tout est mise en scène,

les même photos mille fois prises,

tout est faux, tout est faussé,

cherchez l'erreur dans l'accumulation et dans le procédé.

Boltanski will represent France at the 54th Biennale.

Aliénor.