The Possible Life of Christian Boltanski
On a date in the late 1960s with Annette Messager, the woman who would become his wife, Christian Boltanski wiped off his hands, postdinner, by running them through his hair (much to Messager’s shock). He’d learned the questionable habit from his father, a doctor who believed the practice helped make his hair “beautiful.” The artist’s disclosure comes in one of a series of interviews by curator Catherine Grenier, which she has pieced together to form the absorbing, if flawed, autobiography The Possible Life of Christian Boltanski.
The likable schlemiel is Boltanski’s default persona, and the