Adolph Dietrich Friedrich Reinhardt ("Ad" Reinhardt) (December 24, 1913 – August 30, 1967) was an Abstract painter active in New York beginning in the 1930s and continuing through the 1960s. He was a member of the American Abstract Artists and was a part of the movement centered around the Betty Parsons Gallery that became known as Abstract Expressionism. He was also a founding member of the Artist's Club. He wrote and lectured extensively on art and was a major influence on conceptual, minimal art and monochrome painting. Most famous for his "black" or "ultimate" paintings, he claimed to be painting the "last paintings" that anyone can paint. He believed in a philosophy of art he called Art-as-Art and used his writing and satirical cartoons to advocate for abstract art and against what he described as "the disreputable practices of artists-as-artists".

Background[link]

Reinhardt was born in Buffalo, New York, and lived with his family in the Riverside section along the Niagara River. His cousin Otto and he were close, as well as the extended family, but work took his father to New York City. He later studied art history at Columbia University, where he was a close friend of Robert Lax and Thomas Merton. The three developed similar concepts of simplicity in different directions. Reinhardt considered himself a painter from a very early age and began winning prizes for painting in grade school and high school. Feeling that he had already acquired all the technical skills in high school he turned down scholarships at art schools and accepted a full scholarship at Columbia University which he attended from 1931 to 1935. He took painting classes as an undergraduate at Columbia's Teachers College and after graduation began to study painting with Carl Holty and Francis Criss at the American Artists School, while simultaneously studying portraiture at the National Academy of Design under Karl Anderson.

Upon finishing college he was accredited as a painter by Burgoyne Diller, which allowed him to work from 1936 until 1940 for the WPA Federal Art Project, easel division. Sponsored by Holty he became a member of the American Abstract Artists group, with whom he exhibited for the next decade. Reinhardt described his association with the group as "one of the greatest things that ever happened to me". He participated in group exhibitions at the Peggy Guggenheim Gallery, and he had his first one man show at the Artists Gallery in 1943. He then went on to be represented by Betty Parsons, exhibiting first at the Wakefield Bookshop, the Mortimer Brandt Gallery and then when she opened her own gallery on 57th street. Reinhardt had regular solo exhibitions yearly at the Betty Parsons Gallery beginning in 1946. He was involved in the 1940 protest against MoMA, designing the leaflet that asked How modern is the Museum of Modern Art? His works were displayed regularly throughout the 1940s and 1950s at the Annual Exhibitions held at the Whitney Museum of American Art. He was also part of the protest against the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1950 which became known as "The Irascibles."

Having completed his studies at the New York University Institute of Fine Arts, Reinhardt became a teacher at Brooklyn College in 1947 and taught there until his death in 1967. He also taught at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco, the University of Wyoming, Yale University and Hunter College, New York.

The Ad Reinhardt Estate is represented by The Pace Gallery, New York.

Works[link]

Paintings[link]

Reinhardt's earliest exhibited paintings avoided representation, but show a steady progression away from objects and external reference. His work progressed from compositions of geometrical shapes in the 1940s to works in different shades of the same color (all red, all blue, all white) in the 1950s. Reinhardt is best known for his so-called "black" paintings of the 1960s, which appear at first glance to be simply canvases painted black but are actually composed of black and nearly black shades. Among many other suggestions, these paintings ask if there can be such a thing as an absolute, even in black, which some viewers may not consider a color at all.

Writings[link]

His writing includes comments on his own work and that of his contemporaries. His concise wit, sharp focus, and sense of abstraction make them interesting reading even for those who have not seen his paintings. Like his paintings, his writing remains controversial decades after its composition. Art as Art, edited by Barbara Rose, University of California Press, 1991.

Graphics[link]

Reinhardt joined the staff of PM in 1942 and he worked full time at this daily newspaper until 1947, with time out while drafted for active duty in the U.S. Navy. While at PM he produced several thousand cartoons and illustrations most notably the series of famous and widely reproduced How to Look at Art series. Reinhardt also illustrated the highly influential and controversial pamphlet Races of Mankind (1943) originally intended for distribution to the U.S. Army, but after being banned subsequently sold close to a million copies. He also illustrated a children's book A Good Man and His Good Wife. While attending Columbia University he designed many covers and illustrations for the humor magazine Jester and was its editor in his senior year (1934–35). Other commercial art work was done "for such varied employers as the Brooklyn Dodgers, Glamour magazine, the CIO, Macy's, The New York Times, the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship, The Book and Magazine Guild, the American Jewish Labor Council, New Masses, the Saturday Evening Post, Ice Cream World, and Listen magazine. He also illustrated many books such as Who's Who in the Zoo (book).

Recent exhibitions[link]

• The Guggenheim Museum has shown Reinhardt's Black Painting as part of their Imageless exhibition, which closed September 14, 2008.
• The New York Academy of Sciences recently podcasted an episode featuring information about the restoration work being done to the Black Painting, with commentary from the Guggenheim's Chief Conservator Carol Stringari. That podcast can be listened to here.
• The Josef Albers Museum Quadrat in Bottrop (Germany) shows Rheinhardts Last Paintings and earlier works along with works from Josef Albers (Hommage to the Square and other) from 26 September 2010 to 09 January 2011. Both worked at Yale University in 1952/53 when J. Albers offered Reinhardt a guest professorship. Details in English are available at press_release.pdf

References[link]

• Lippard, Lucy R. Ad Reinhardt (Harry N. Abrams, 1981.) ISBN 0-8109-1554-5, ISBN 978-0-8109-1554-1
• Marika Herskovic, American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s An Illustrated Survey, (New York School Press, 2003.) ISBN 0-9677994-1-4. p. 278-281
• Marika Herskovic, New York School Abstract Expressionists Artists Choice by Artists, (New York School Press, 2000.) ISBN 0-9677994-0-6. p. 16; p. 38; p. 298-301
• Busch, Julia M. (1974) A Decade of Sculpture: the New Media in the 1960s, The Art Alliance Press (Associated University Presses), ISBN 0-87982-007-1
• Müller-Yao, Marguerite Hui: Der Einfluß der Kunst der chinesischen Kalligraphie auf die westliche informelle Malerei, Diss. Bonn, Köln 1985. ISBN 3-88375-051-4
• Müller-Yao, Marguerite: Informelle Malerei und chinesische Kalligrafie’’, in: ’’Informel, Begegnung und Wandel’’, (hrsg von Heinz Althöfer, Schriftenreihe des Museums am Ostwall; Bd. 2), Dortmund 2002, ISBN 3-611-01062-6
• Stratenschulte, Julian: Josef Albers Museum Opens Exhibition of the Last Paintings Made by Ad Reinhardt at artdaily.org

External links[link]

• Ad Reinhardt Foundation
• The Pace Gallery
• Ad Reinhardt bio at Guggenheim Museum site
• Art Collection at MOMA site
• American Abstract Artists
• Ad Reinhardt Papers at the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art
• Abe Ajay correspondence with Ad Reinhardt, 1963-1967 from the Smithsonian Archives of American Art
• Last Paintings. Exhibition at the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat in Bottrop

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Ad Reinhardt

Chaka Khan
Khan performing at the Chumash Casino Resort in Santa Ynez, California
Background information
Birth name	Yvette Marie Stevens
Also known as	Chaka Adunne Aduffe Hodarhi Karifi Khan, Queen of Funk
Born	(1953-03-23) March 23, 1953 (age 59) Chicago, Illinois, United States
Genres	R&B, jazz, funk, soul, disco, adult contemporary
Occupations	Singer-songwriter
Instruments	Vocals
Years active	1964–present
Labels	ABC (1972–1978) Warner Bros. (1978–1998) MCA (1979–1982) NPG (1998–2001) Burgundy (2005–2010)
Associated acts	Rufus, Prince
Website	www.chakakhan.com

Chaka Khan (born Yvette Marie Stevens; March 23, 1953), frequently known as the "Queen of Funk", is a 10-time Grammy Award winning American singer-songwriter who gained fame in the 1970s as the frontwoman and focal point of the funk band Rufus.

While still a member of the group in 1978, Khan embarked on a successful solo career. Her signature hits, both with Rufus and as a solo performer, include "Tell Me Something Good", "Sweet Thing" which she wrote for her then husband Richard Holland, "Ain't Nobody", "I'm Every Woman", "I Feel for You" and "Through the Fire".

Biography[link]

Early life: 1953–1972[link]

Khan was born Yvette Marie Stevens in Chicago, Illinois. Raised in Chicago's rough South Side housing projects, Khan was the eldest of five children to Charles Stevens and Sandra Coleman. Her sister Yvonne Stevens later became a successful musician in her own right under the name Taka Boom. Her only brother Mark Stevens, who formed the funk group Aurra, also became a successful musician. She has two other sisters, Kathleen Burrell and Tammy McCrary, who is her current manager.^[1] Unlike many of her musical contemporaries, Khan was raised as Roman Catholic. Khan attributed her love of music to her grandmother, who introduced her to jazz music as a child. Khan became a fan of R&B music as a preteen and at eleven formed her first all-female singing group the Crystalettes, which also included her sister Taka. In the late 1960s, Khan and her sister formed the vocal group Shades of Black and joined the Black Panther Party after befriending fellow member, activist and Chicago native Fred Hampton in 1967.^[2] While a member, she was given a name change to Chaka Adunne Aduffe Hodarhi Karifi by an African shaman. In 1969, she left the Panthers, dropped out of high school, having attended Calumet High School and Kenwood High School (now Kenwood Academy),^[3] and began to perform in small groups around the Chicago area, first performing with the group Lyfe, which included her then boyfriend Hassan Khan, whom she'd later marry. Khan was asked to replace the late Baby Huey of Baby Huey & the Babysitters after Huey's untimely death, in 1970. The group disbanded a year later. While performing in local bands in 1972, Khan was spotted by two members of a new group simply called Rufus and soon won her position in the group. The group later signed with ABC Records in 1973. Prior to Khan signing with the label, she married her on-again, off-again boyfriend Hassan Khan, changing her stage name to Chaka Khan.

Early career and success: 1973–1978[link]

In 1974, Rufus released their self-titled debut album. Despite their fiery rendition of Stevie Wonder's "Maybe Your Baby" from Wonder's acclaimed Talking Book and the modest success of the Khan-led ballad "Whoever's Thrilling You (Is Killing Me)", the album failed to garner attention. That changed when Wonder himself collaborated with the group on a song he had written for Khan. That song, "Tell Me Something Good", became the group's breakthrough hit, reaching number-three on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1974 later winning the group their first Grammy Award. The single's success and the subsequent follow-up, "You Got the Love", which peaked at number-eleven on the Billboard Hot 100 helped their second parent album, Rags to Rufus, go platinum selling over a million copies. Between 1974 and 1979, Rufus would release six platinum-selling albums including Rufusized, Rufus Featuring Chaka Khan, Ask Rufus, Street Player and Masterjam. Hits the group would score during this time included "Once You Get Started", "Sweet Thing", "Hollywood", "At Midnight (My Love Will Lift You Up)" and "Do You Love What You Feel".

The band gained a reputation as a live performing act with Khan becoming the star attraction, thanks to her powerful vocals and stage attire, which sometimes included Native American garb and showing her midriff. Most of the band's material was written and produced by the band itself with few exceptions. Khan has also been noted for being an instrumentalist playing drums and bass, she also provided percussion during her tenure with Rufus. Most of Khan's compositions were often collaborations with guitarist Tony Maiden. Relations between Khan and the group, particularly between Khan and group member Andre Fischer, became stormy. Several group members left with nearly every release. While Khan remained a member of the group, she signed a solo contract with Warner Bros in 1978. While Khan was busy at work on solo material, Rufus released three albums without Khan's participation including 1979's Numbers, 1980's Party 'Til You're Broke and 1983's Seal in Red.

Early solo career and final years with Rufus: 1978–1983[link]

In 1978, Warner Bros. Records released Khan's solo debut album, which featured the crossover disco hit, "I'm Every Woman", written for her by songwriters Ashford & Simpson. The success of the single helped the album go platinum, selling over a million copies. Khan also was a featured performer on Quincy Jones' hit, "Stuff Like That", also released in 1978.

In 1979, Khan reunited with Rufus to collaborate on the Jones-produced Masterjam, which featured their hit, "Do You Love What You Feel", which Khan sang with Tony Maiden. Despite her sometimes-acrimonious relationship with some of the group's band mates, Khan and Maiden have maintained a friendship over the years. In 1979 she also duetted with Ry Cooder on his album Bop Till You Drop. In 1980, while Rufus released their second non-Khan release, Party 'Til You're Broke, Khan released her second solo album, Naughty, which featured Khan on the cover with her six-year-old daughter Milini. The album yielded the minor disco hit "Clouds" and went gold. Khan released two albums in 1981, the Rufus release, Camouflage and the solo album, What Cha' Gonna Do for Me. The same year, Khan appeared on three tracks on Rick Wakeman's concept album 1984. In 1982, Khan issued two more solo albums, the jazz-oriented Echoes of an Era and a more funk/pop-oriented self-titled album. The latter album's track, the jazz-inflected "Bebop Medley", won Khan a Grammy and earned praise from Betty Carter who loved Khan's vocal scatting in the song.^[4]

In 1983, following the release of Rufus' final studio album, Seal in Red, which did not feature Khan, the singer returned with Rufus on a live album, Stompin' at the Savoy - Live, which featured the studio single, "Ain't Nobody", which became the group's final charting success reaching number twenty-two on the Billboard Hot 100 and number-one on the Hot R&B chart, while also reaching the top ten in the United Kingdom. Following this release, Rufus separated for good.

[edit] I Feel For You and Solo success: 1984–1996

In 1984, Khan released her sixth studio album, I Feel for You. The title track was the first single released. Originally written and recorded by Prince for his eponymous follow-up to his debut album in 1979, it had been previously recorded by The Pointer Sisters and Mary Wells. Khan's version featured a harmonica solo by Stevie Wonder and an introductory rap by Grandmaster Melle Mel. This version of the song became a million-selling smash in the U.S. and UK, and it helped to relaunch Khan's career. I Feel For You topped not only the U.S. R&B and dance charts, but achieved great success on U.S. pop charts, and reached number one in the United Kingdom as well. The song reached number three on the Billboard Hot 100 in December 1984, and remained on that chart for 26 weeks, well into 1985. It was listed as Billboard's number 5 song for the year 1985, and netted Prince the 1985 Grammy Award for Best R&B Song. In addition to the song's successful radio airplay and sales, a music video of Chaka Khan with break dancers in an inner-city setting enjoyed heavy airplay on television and helped to solidify Chaka Khan's notoriety in popular culture.

Other singles which helped the I Feel For You album to go platinum included "This is my Night" and the ballad "Through the Fire", the latter which was also very successful on the adult contemporary charts. Khan was featured in Steve Winwood's 1986 number one hit, "Higher Love". That same year, a duet was planned with Robert Palmer for his album Riptide, on the song "Addicted To Love". However, her manager declined to allow the duet to be released, citing the desire to not have too much "product" from her in the marketplace at one time; she was still credited for the vocal arrangements in the album's liner notes, and the song became an international hit.^[5] Khan followed up her successful I Feel For You album with 1986's Destiny and 1988's CK. Khan found more success in the late 1980s with a remix album, Life is a Dance - The Remix Project, which reached the top ten on the UK albums chart. As a result Khan performed regularly in the United Kingdom, where she maintained a strong fan base.

In 1990, she was a featured performer on another major hit when she collaborated with Ray Charles and Quincy Jones on a new jack swing cover of The Brothers Johnson's "I'll Be Good to You", which was featured on Jones' Back on the Block. The song reached number-eighteen on the Billboard Hot 100 and number-one on the Hot R&B chart, later winning Charles and Khan a Grammy for Best R&B Vocal Performance By a Duo or Group. Khan returned with her first studio album in four years in 1992 with the release of The Woman I Am, which went gold thanks to the R&B success of the songs "Love You All My Lifetime" and "You Can Make the Story Right". Khan also contributed to soundtracks and worked on a follow-up to The Woman I Am which she titled Dare You to Love Me, which was eventually shelved. In 1995, she and rapper Guru had a hit with the duet "Watch What You Say", in the UK. That same year, she provided a contemporary R&B cover of the classic standard, "My Funny Valentine", for the Waiting to Exhale soundtrack. In 1996, following the release of her greatest-hits album, Epiphany: The Best of Chaka Khan, Vol. 1, Khan abruptly left Warner Bros. after stating the label had neglected her and failed to release Dare You to Love Me.^[6]

Later career and current work: 1998–present[link]

Khan in December 2010

In 1998, Khan signed a contract with Prince's NPG Records label and issued Come 2 My House, followed by the single "Don't Talk 2 Strangers", a cover of a 1996 Prince song. Khan later went on a tour with Prince as a co-headlining act. In 2000, Khan departed from NPG and in 2004 released her first jazz covers album in twenty-two years with 2004's ClassiKhan. She also covered "Little Wing" with Kenny Olson on the album Power of Soul: A Tribute to Jimi Hendrix. Three years later, after signing with Burgundy Records, Khan released what many critics called a "comeback album" with Funk This, produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis.

The album featured the hit, "Angel", and the Mary J. Blige duet, "Disrespectful". The latter track went to number one on the U.S. dance singles chart, winning the singers a Grammy Award, while Funk This also won a Grammy for Best R&B Album. The album was notable for Khan's covers of Dee Dee Warwick's "Foolish Fool" and Prince's "Sign o' the Times". In 2008, Khan participated in the Broadway adaptation of The Color Purple playing Ms. Sofia to Fantasia Barrino's Celie.^[7]

In a 2008 interview Khan said that she, unlike other artists, felt very optimistic about the current changes in the recording industry, including music downloading. "I'm glad things are shifting and artists – not labels – are having more control over their art. My previous big record company (Warner Music) has vaults of my recordings that haven't seen the light of day that people need to hear. This includes Robert Palmer's original recording of "Addicted to Love" – which they took my vocals off of! We are working on getting it (and other tracks) all back now."^[6]

In 2009, Khan hit the road with singers Anastacia and Lulu for Here Come the Girls. In 2010, Khan contributed to vocals for Beverley Knight's "Soul Survivor", collaborated with Clay Aiken on a song for the kids show Phineas and Ferb, and performed two songs with Japanese singer Ai on Ai's latest album The Last Ai. Khan continues to perform to packed audiences both in her native United States and overseas.

On May 19, 2011, Khan was given the 2,440th Hollywood Walk of Fame star plaque on a section of Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles. Her family was present when the singer accepted the honor, as was Stevie Wonder, who had written her breakout hit "Tell Me Something Good".

On September 27, 2011, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame committee announced that Khan and her former band Rufus were jointly nominated for induction to the hall. It was the collective's first nomination 13 years after they were first eligible. The group were nominated partly due to Khan's own storied reputation, including her own solo career in conjunction with her years with Rufus.

Recently, Khan Rerecorded her song, Super Life, under the title "Super Life: Fear Kills, Love Heals" with Eric Benet, Kelly Price, and Luke James in tribute to Trayvon Martin, a teenager who was killed Feb. 26. A number of celebrities also joined in the recording including Loretta Devine, Terry Crews, Eva Pigford, and reporter Kevin Frazier.

Personal life[link]

Khan has been married twice and is the mother of two children, daughter Indira Milini and son Damien Holland. Khan's first marriage was to Hassan Khan, in 1970, when she was 17. They divorced a short time later. Milini's birth was the result of a relationship between Khan and Rahsaan Morris.^[1] Khan married her second husband, Richard Holland, in 1976. The marriage reportedly caused a rift between Khan and several members of Rufus, in particular, Andre Fischer. Khan dated a Chicago-area schoolteacher in the mid-1980s in the middle of her solo stardom. Following their separation, Khan moved to Europe, first settling in London, later buying a residence in Germany.

In the past, Khan struggled with drug abuse and alcoholism. Her drug use, which at times included cocaine and heroin, ended sometime in the early 1990s. Khan would have an on-again, off-again struggle with alcoholism until 2005 declaring herself sober. In 2006, her son Damien Holland was accused of murder after 17-year-old Christopher Bailey was shot to death. Khan testified on her son's behalf defending her son's innocence. Holland claimed the shooting was an accident and was found not guilty.^[8] Though she sang at both the 2000 Democratic and Republican conventions, Khan says that she is more of a "Democratic-minded person".^[9]

In December 2011, Khan won permanent custody of her granddaughter, Daija Jade Holland, after reporting that her granddaughter's mother, girlfriend of Khan's son Damien Holland, was unable to raise her due to her drug addiction. It was reported that Khan's son was also addicted to drugs.^[10]

Awards[link]

Grammy Awards[link]

To date, Chaka Khan has won 10 Grammy Awards, including two as a member of Rufus. She has received 22 Grammy Award nominations, including three as a member of Rufus.

Soul Train Awards[link]

• 1998 Lena Horne Award (Career Achievement) (Recipient)
• 2009 Legends Award (Career Achievement) (Recipient)

United Negro College Fund Award[link]

• 2011 UNCF: Award of Excellence (Recipient)

American Music Award nominations[link]

To date, she has had four American Music Award nominations.

• 1985 Favorite Female Artist - Soul/Rhythm & Blues (Nominee only. Award recipient was Tina Turner)
• 1985 Favorite Female Video Artist - Soul/Rhythm & Blues (Nominee only. Award recipient was Tina Turner)
• 1982 Favorite Female Artist - Soul/Rhythm & Blues (Nominee only. Award recipient was Stephanie Mills)
• 1981 Favorite Female Artist - Soul/Rhythm & Blues (Nominee only. Award recipient was Diana Ross)

References:^[8][11]

Discography[link]

• Chaka (1978)
• Naughty (1980)
• What Cha' Gonna Do for Me (1981)
• Chaka Khan (1982)
• I Feel for You (1984)
• Destiny (1986)
• CK (1988)
• The Woman I Am (1992)
• Come 2 My House (1998)
• ClassiKhan (2004)
• Funk This (2007)

See also[link]

• Rufus discography

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Chaka Khan

• Chaka Khan official website
• Chaka Khan Foundation
• Chaka Khan at Wenig-Lamonica Associates

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2010)

Yve-Alain Bois, who was born on April 16, 1952, in Constantine, Algeria, is a professor of art and film at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.

Education[link]

Bois received an M.A. from the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris for work on El Lissitzky's typography, and a Ph.D. from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales for his work on Lissitzky's and Malevich's conceptions of space.^[1]

Career[link]

Academic career[link]

Bois is a professor at the European Graduate School and at the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, in the chair inaugurated by Erwin Panofsky.^[1] Previously, he served on the faculty at Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.^[1]

Writing[link]

Bois has written books and articles on artists of European modernism. He is an editor of the journal October.

Articles[link]

• "Whose Formalism?" Art Bulletin, Mar. 1996 European Graduate School
• Review of Tony Smith retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Artforum, Nov. 1998
• Review of "Supports/Surfaces" exhibition at the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Artforum, Dec. 1998
• Bois and Linda Nochlin discuss the Matisse and Picasso exhibition, Artforum, Feb. 1999
• Review of Barnett Newman retrospective, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Artforum, Mar. 2002
• "The Mourning After," panel discussion on painting, Artforum, Mar. 2003
• On Fred Sandback, Artforum, Oct. 2003

References[link]

External links[link]

• Bois faculty page at European Graduate School
• Interview with Bois for Folha de Sao Paulo, Caderno Mais!, 2005
• MIT Press: list of books and articles by Bois
• All About Yve: An Interview with Yve-Alain Bois (1995)
• "From Art to Barthes and Back Again," The Harvard Crimson, September 19, 1991

Sophie Calle and Alexandra Cohen

Sophie Calle (born 1953) is a French writer, photographer, installation artist, and conceptual artist.^[1] Calle's work is distinguished by its use of arbitrary sets of constraints, and evokes the French literary movement of the 1960s known as Oulipo. Her work frequently depicts human vulnerability, and examines identity and intimacy. She is recognized for her detective-like ability to follow strangers and investigate their private lives. Her photographic work often includes panels of text of her own writing.

Since 2005 Sophie Calle has taught as a professor of film and photography at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.^[1] She has lectured at the University of California, San Diego in the Visual Arts Department.^[2] She has also taught at Mills College in Oakland, California. Exhibitions featuring the work of Sophie Calle took place at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia,^[3] at Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme, Paris,^[4] at Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, USA, at the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Belgium; Videobrasil, SESC Pompeia, São Paulo, Brazil; Museum of Modern Art of Bahia, Salvador, Brazil; Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, UK; and the De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art, Tilburg, The Netherlands.^[5]

Early works[link]

After completing her schooling she travelled for seven years. When she returned to Paris in 1979 she began a series of projects to acquaint herself again both with the city and people of Paris and with herself. However, she soon discovered that observing the behaviour and actions of these strangers provided information with which to construct their identities. These sought to construct identities by offering documentary ‘proof' in the form of photographs. Her work was seen to have roots in the tradition of conceptual art because the emphasis was on the artistic idea rather than the finished object. The French writer Jean Baudrillard wrote an essay (1988) that described this project in terms of a reciprocal loss of will on the part of both pursued and pursuer.

In Suite Venitienne (1979), Calle followed a man she met at a party in Paris to Venice, where she disguised herself and followed him around the city, photographing him. Calle’s surveillance of the man, who she identifies only as Henri B., includes black and white photographs accompanied by text.^[6]

The following year, Calle organized The Sleepers, a project in which she invited 24 people to occupy her bed continuously for eight days. Some were friends, or friends of friends, and some were strangers to her. She served them food and photographed them every hour.

Another project, entitled The Shadow (1981) and displayed in the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, consisted of Calle being followed for a day by a private detective, who had been hired (at Calle's request) by her mother. It was, in Calle's words, an attempt 'to provide photographic evidence of my own existence'. Calle proceeded to lead the unwitting detective around parts of Paris that were particularly important for her, thereby reversing the expected position of the observed subject. Aware of her follower, she also wrote about in frequent journal entries throughout the day. Such projects, with their suggestions of intimacy, also questioned the role of the spectator, with viewers often feeling a sense of unease as they became the unwitting collaborators in these violations of privacy. Moreover, the deliberately constructed and thus in one sense artificial nature of the documentary ‘evidence' used in Calle's work questioned the nature of all truths.

In order to execute her project The Hotel (1981), she was hired as a chambermaid at a hotel in Venice where she was able to explore the writings and objects of the hotel guests. Insight into her process and its resulting aesthetic can be gained through her account of this project: "I spent one year to find the hotel, I spent three months going through the text and writing it, I spent three months going through the photographs, and I spent one day deciding it would be this size and this frame...it's the last thought in the process."^[7]

One of Calle's first projects to generate public controversy was Address Book (1983). The French daily newspaper Libération invited her to publish a series of 28 articles. Having recently found an address book on the street (which she photocopied and returned to its owner), she decided to call some of the telephone numbers in the book and speak with the people about its owner. To the transcripts of these conversations, Calle added photographs of the man's favorite activities, creating a portrait of a man she never met, by way of his acquaintances. The articles were published, but upon discovering them, the owner of the address book, a documentary filmmaker named Pierre Baudry, threatened to sue the artist for invasion of privacy. As Calle reports, the owner discovered a nude photograph of her, and demanded the newspaper publish it, in retaliation for what he perceived to be an unwelcome intrusion into his private life.

Another of Calle's noteworthy projects is titled The Blind (1986), for which she interviewed blind people, and asked them to define beauty. Their responses were accompanied by her photographic interpretation of their ideas of beauty, and portraits of the interviewees.

Calle has created elaborate display cases of birthday presents given to her throughout her life; this process was detailed by Gregoire Bouillier in his memoir The Mystery Guest: An Account (2006). According to Bouillier, the premise of his story was that "A woman who has left a man without saying why calls him years later and asks him to be the 'mystery guest' at a birthday party thrown by the artist Sophie Calle. And by the end of this fashionable—and utterly humiliating—party, the narrator figures out the secret of their breakup." ^[8]

She is fascinated by the interface between our public lives and our private selves. This has led her to investigate patterns of behaviour using techniques akin to those of a private investigator, a psychologist, or a forensic scientist. It has also led her to investigate her own behaviour so that her life, as lived and as imagined, has informed many of her most interesting works.

One of her birthday parties serves as an important setting in French memoirist Grégoire Bouillier's The Mystery Guest.

Later works[link]

In 1996, Calle released a film titled No Sex Last Night which she created in collaboration with American photographer Gregory Shephard. The film documents their road trip across America, which ends in a wedding chapel in Las Vegas. Rather than following the genre conventions of a road trip or a romance, the film is designed to document the result of a man and woman who barely knew each other, embarking on an intimate journey together.

Calle is known largely for works combining texts and photographic images in a cool presentational style; The Birthday Ceremony is her first major sculptural installation and it has been conceived especially for Art Now 14. Although made in 1998 the work has its origins in the years 1980 to 1993 when Calle invented and sustained a series of private and shared rituals around her birthday. These are now manifest as art, demonstrating how closely her life and her art are intertwined. Over this fourteen-year period, aside from the occasional year of disruption, Calle held an annual dinner party on the evening (or around the time) of her birthday. To each celebration she invited a group of friends and relatives, the precise number of invitees corresponding to the number of years of her age, with one additional, anonymous guest nominated by a chosen guest, in order to symbolise the unknown of her future. Calle initiated these dinner parties to ensure that her birthday was remembered each year. They were the most ambitious of a series of rituals Calle had invented to override an obsessive insecurity she experienced in early adulthood. The guests brought gifts, tokens of love and affection, and these Calle displayed in a glass-fronted cabinet, as a constant reminder of this affection. At the end of the year the objects were boxed up and put away, their places taken by the gifts of another birthday dinner party. At stressful moments over the years Calle was able to unpack the boxes and reassure herself of her networks of support. When she became forty in 1993, Calle realised she had been cured of this obsessive insecurity and no longer felt the necessity to recall her friendships and family ties in such a formal way.

The Birthday Ceremony brings together fifteen cabinets based on the medical design of the original, which had been given to Calle by her father. Thirteen individual cabinets and one pair, each contain the gifts of a single year. The gifts are displayed unwrapped and range from the banal to the bizarre. They include works of art, hand made tokens of affection, books and letters, junk and antiques, plastic trivia, items stolen from a restaurant, bottles of wine, chocolates and so on. Encased behind glass they become objects of magnetic desire and frustration to the viewer, who cannot hold, cannot taste, cannot unwrap. On the glass of each cabinet is a list of items. The donors themselves are not always named and it is therefore often impossible to tell if the works of art were given by the artists themselves (probable in the case of Christian Boltanski or Annette Messager, improbable in the case of the late Yves Klein). In some cases it is easy to identify a donor. Calle's mother is clearly responsible for the sensible and substantial gifts of domestic equipment that arrive each year - deliberately too large to display behind glass -and which are represented by the manufacturer's warranty. In other cases a particular theme emerges over time: someone often gives hats, another is interested in bull-fighting ephemera. On occasions, most notably with the fabulous painted-wood angel received on her fortieth birthday, guests join together to share a gift.

Calle first explored this ritual in a photographic work depicting the cabinet and its contents, reducing the annual ceremony and its associated objects to a series of documentary records. The development of the subject and its realisation as a series of installations, creates a work that is both more poignant and more perplexing. The Birthday Ceremony draws our attention to the way in which we construct our identity around secret rituals (from forms of self- indulgence to forms of self-denial) and surround ourselves with objects and activities that give meaning and substance to both our private and our public lives. In transforming personal ritual into public display The Birthday Ceremony also raises questions about the meaning of these objects, each one removed from its customary realm. Each one is evidence of a relationship and a transaction of a particular kind and they are laid out here according to criteria that have nothing to do with traditional museum techniques of classification or display.

Calle asked writer and filmmaker Paul Auster to "invent a fictive character which I would attempt to resemble"^[9] and served as the model for the character Maria in Auster’s novel Leviathan (1992). This mingling of fact and fiction so intrigued Calle that she created the works of art created by the fictional character, which included a series of color-coordinated meals.

Auster later challenged Calle to create and maintain a public amenity in New York. The artist's response was to augment a telephone booth (on the corner of Greenwich and Harrison streets in Manhattan) with a note pad, a bottle of water, a pack of cigarettes, flowers, cash, and sundry other items. Every day, Calle cleaned the booth and restocked the items, until the telephone company removed and discarded them. This project is documented in The Gotham Handbook (1998).^[9]

In 1999 Calle exhibited the installation "Appointment" especially conceived for the Freud Museum in London, working with the ideas of her private desires. In Room with a View (2003), Calle spent the night in a bed installed at the top of the Eiffel Tower. She invited people to come to her and read her bedtime stories in order to keep her awake through the night. The same year, Calle had her first one-woman show at the Musée National d'Art Moderne at Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

"Douleur Exquise" (exquisite pain) 2003. She was supposed to go to Japan but didn’t want to, so she took the train through Moscow and through Siberia, then through Beijing, then to Hong Kong. She was supposed to meet her lover in New Delhi, but he made up some sort of story about a car accident, which she realized was a lie. She took a photograph every day until the day they were supposed to meet in New Delhi, and wrote about how much she looked forward to meeting him. The second half of the book was all about the pain of the heartbreak. She would write about the horrible memory of the conversation where she realized he was breaking up with her on one page, and ask people to tell her their worst memory, which was placed on the right. Over the days, her story became shorter and shorter as her pain dissipated over the time. The juxtaposition of everyone’s terrible memories also played down the pain of a simple breakup.

Calle's text Exquisite Pain was adapted into a performance in 2004 by Forced Entertainment, a theatrical company based in Sheffield, England.

At the 2007 Venice Biennale, Sophie Calle showed her piece Take Care of Yourself, named after the last line of the message her ex had left her. Calle had asked dozens of women—including a parrot and a hand puppet—to interpret the break-up e-mail and presented the results in the French pavilion.^[10] Jessica Lott, winner of the Frieze Writer's Prize for her review of the piece, described it thus: "Take Care of Yourself is a break-up letter (Calle's) then-boyfriend (Grégoire Bouillier, dubbed ‘X’) sent her via e-mail. Calle took the e-mail, and the paralyzing confusion that accompanies the mind’s failure to comprehend heartbreak, and distributed it to 107 women of various professions, skills and talents to help her understand it – to interpret, analyze, examine and perform it. The result of this seemingly obsessive, schoolyard exercise is paradoxically one of the most expansive and telling pieces of art on women and contemporary feminism to pass through (the major art centres) in recent years".^[11]

At her gallery shows, Calle frequently supplies suggestion forms on which visitors are encouraged to furnish ideas for her art, while she sits beside them with an uninterested expression.

In November 2008, she participated in an exhibition "Système C, un festival de coincidence" proposed by the Stéréotypes Associés in Mains d'Oeuvres, Paris.^{[citation needed]}

In October 2009, a major exhibition of her works, including Take Care of Yourself, The Sleepers, Address Book and others, opened at the Whitechapel Gallery in London. In 2010 another major exhibition opened in Denmark at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art.^[12]

In 2011 her work "True Stories" was installed at the historic 1850 House at the Pontalba Building at Jackson Square in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana as part of the Prospect 2 Contemporary Art Festival. The house, an historic museum that is managed as part of the Louisiana State Museum, is furnished with historic furniture as it was in the mid 19th Century. The artist inserted her own, personal historical objects and ephemera, with short, narrative explanatory text, into the scenes, affecting the notion that she had occupied the house shortly before the viewers' arrival.

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Sophie Calle, Double Game, with the participation of Paul Auster, Violette Editions, 1999. ISBN 1-900828-06-5
• Sophie Calle, M'as tu vue. Centre Pompidou & Edition Xavier Baral, 2003.
• Sophie Calle, Exquisite Pain, Thames and Hudson, 2004. ISBN 0-500-51198-5
• Sophie Calle, Appointment, Thames and Hudson in association with Violette Editions, 2005. ISBN 978-0-500-51199-2
• Sophie Calle & Fabio Balducci, En finir. Actes Sud, 2005.
• Sophie Calle, Double Game, with the participation of Paul Auster (2nd edition), Violette Editions, 2007. ISBN 978-1-900828-28-4
• Gabrielle Moser 'Working-through' public and private labour: Sophie Calle's Prenez soin de vous' n.paradoxa:international feminist art journal vol.27 Jan 2011 pp. 5-13

Biography[link]

• Fabian Stech, J'ai parlé avec Lavier, Annette Messager, Sylvie Fleury, Hirschhorn, Pierre Huyghe, Delvoye, D.F.-G. Hou Hanru, Sophie Calle, Yan Pei-Ming, Sans et Bourriaud. Presses du réel Dijon, 2007.

External links[link]

• Sophie Calle. Faculty page at European Graduate School (Biography, filmography, photos and video lectures)
• Sophie Calle at Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin Museum
• Profile of Sophie Calle at Arndt Berlin (German)
• Sophie Calle books published by Violette Editions
• Tate: Venice Biennale: Sophie Calle The artist talks about her contributions to the 2007 Venice Biennale. 29 June 2007
• Artist Biography and list of video works by Sophie Calle at Electronic Arts Intermix eai.org.