[{"id":8450,"title":"Autoportrait","dimensions":"19.8 x 14.2 cm, 128 p, language: French, publisher: P.O.L Editeur, ISBN: 2-84682-064-3","date_begin":"2005-01-01","material":"Ink, paper","short_description":"","art_status_id":13,"legal_status_id":47,"category_id":26,"platform_id":1,"deleted":false,"asset_count":2,"stream_count":0,"collection":"Collection M HKA, Antwerp","cached_tag_list":"artist novel","publishing_process_id":1,"annotation":"","date_end":null,"reference":"B 2027/46","stream_count_app":7,"permalink":"autoportrait","description_ru":null,"description_de":null,"description_es":null,"description_el":null,"short_description_du":null,"short_description_fr":null,"short_description_ru":null,"short_description_de":null,"short_description_es":null,"short_description_el":null,"description_ca":null,"short_description_ca":null,"description_it":null,"short_description_it":null,"cached_primary_asset_url":null,"cached_actor_names":null,"hide_from_json":false,"prev_platform_id":null,"description_uk":null,"short_description_uk":null,"description_tr":null,"short_description_tr":null,"mhka_works":true,"poster_image":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/mhka_ensembles_production/assets/public/000/028/356/large/Untitled088.jpg?1430211365","poster_credits":null,"translations":[{"locale":"en","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eLiterary synopsis\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn this brilliant and sobering self-portrait, Edouard Lev\u0026eacute; hides nothing from his readers, setting out his entire life, more or less at random, in a string of declarative sentences. \u003cem\u003eAutoportrait \u003c/em\u003eis a physical, psychological, sexual, political, and philosophical triumph. Beyond \u0026quot;sincerity,\u0026quot; Lev\u0026eacute; works toward an objectivity so radical it could pass for crudeness, triviality, even banality: the author has stripped himself bare. With the force of a set of maxims or morals, Lev\u0026eacute;\u0026#39;s prose seems at first to be an autobiography without sentiment, as though written by a machine\u0026mdash;until, through the accumulation of detail, and the author\u0026#39;s dry, quizzical tone, we find ourselves disarmed, enthralled, and enraptured by nothing less than the perfect fiction . . . made entirely of facts.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRelation of the novel to the artist\u0026rsquo;s practice\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLev\u0026eacute; wrote \u003cem\u003eAutoportrait \u003c/em\u003e in 2002, while he was traveling across America, taking the photographs that became \u003cem\u003eS\u0026eacute;rie Am\u0026eacute;rique\u003c/em\u003e. The series looks at towns in the United States bearing the same names as towns in other countries. What makes \u003cem\u003eAm\u0026eacute;rique \u003c/em\u003emore interesting still is Lev\u0026eacute;\u0026#39;s development from a conceptual to an almost classical aesthetic. The organic approach to Am\u0026eacute;rique comes almost as a shock; compositionally, these photos are as subtle as they are radical. Lev\u0026eacute;\u0026#39;s distinction between landscape and portraiture is willfully ambiguous, almost na\u0026iuml;ve. \u003cem\u003eAutoportrait\u003c/em\u003e, the brief, uncompromising memoir that Lev\u0026eacute; composed during that same trip, is a variation on this aesthetic in prose. The book is composed entirely of brisk declarative sentences about the author in the first person, often without any discernible narrative coherence. Lev\u0026eacute;\u0026#39;s ambivalence to the memoir as a construct prevails throughout \u003cem\u003eAutoportrait\u003c/em\u003e, its own kind of deformation, wherein the act of explaining a life becomes interchangeable with describing an image\u0026mdash;whatever details can be discerned, in any order you like. Lev\u0026eacute;\u0026#39;s own portrait, too, is rendered a landscape.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.pol-editeur.com/index.php?spec=livre\u0026amp;ISBN=2-84682-064-3\"\u003eNovel\u0026#39;s website\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e"},{"locale":"nl","description":""},{"locale":"fr","description":""}]},{"id":8449,"title":"Suicide","dimensions":"14 x 20.5 cm, 128 p, language: French, publisher: P.O.L Editeur, ISBN: 978-2-84682-236-7","date_begin":"2008-01-01","material":"Ink, paper","short_description":"","art_status_id":13,"legal_status_id":47,"category_id":26,"platform_id":1,"deleted":false,"asset_count":2,"stream_count":0,"collection":"Collection M HKA, Antwerp","cached_tag_list":"artist novel","publishing_process_id":1,"annotation":"","date_end":null,"reference":"B 2027/45","stream_count_app":7,"permalink":"suicide","description_ru":null,"description_de":null,"description_es":null,"description_el":null,"short_description_du":null,"short_description_fr":null,"short_description_ru":null,"short_description_de":null,"short_description_es":null,"short_description_el":null,"description_ca":null,"short_description_ca":null,"description_it":null,"short_description_it":null,"cached_primary_asset_url":null,"cached_actor_names":null,"hide_from_json":false,"prev_platform_id":null,"description_uk":null,"short_description_uk":null,"description_tr":null,"short_description_tr":null,"mhka_works":true,"poster_image":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/mhka_ensembles_production/assets/public/000/028/358/large/Untitled086.jpg?1430211556","poster_credits":null,"translations":[{"locale":"en","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eLiterary synopsis\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eSuicide \u003c/em\u003eby Edouard Lev\u0026eacute; tells two intertwined stories. In one, a young man has killed himself and a friend meditates on the dead man\u0026#39;s life. In the other, a young author has killed himself, but not before writing a novel in which a young man has killed himself and a friend meditates on the dead man\u0026#39;s life. Part of what makes the experience of reading \u003cem\u003eSuicide \u003c/em\u003e so singular is that the young author in question is Edouard Lev\u0026eacute; himself. Ten days after handing in his manuscript, Lev\u0026eacute; hanged himself, at age forty-two. It is all but impossible when reading, then, not to be constantly aware that Lev\u0026eacute; was about to kill himself when he was writing and did kill himself soon after he stopped.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e- Laird Hunt, 2011\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRelation of the novel to the artist\u0026rsquo;s practice\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLev\u0026eacute; wrote \u003cem\u003eAutoportrait \u003c/em\u003ein 2002, while he was traveling across America, taking the photographs that became \u003cem\u003eS\u0026eacute;rie Am\u0026eacute;rique\u003c/em\u003e. The series looks at towns in the United States bearing the same names as towns in other countries. \u003cem\u003eAm\u0026eacute;rique \u003c/em\u003ewas \u0026Eacute;douard Lev\u0026eacute;\u0026#39;s final collection of photos. In 2007, the year after its publication, he took his own life at 42. His last prose work, the short novel \u003cem\u003eSuicide\u003c/em\u003e, was completed 10 days before his death, and expands on an anecdote in \u003cem\u003eAutoportrait \u003c/em\u003eabout a childhood friend. \u0026quot;To survive an ordeal,\u0026quot; Lev\u0026eacute; says elsewhere, \u0026quot;I break it up into sections.\u0026quot; One might glean that those sections were his projects\u0026mdash;his photos and his books\u0026mdash;and that the ordeal was life itself.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"locale":"nl","description":""},{"locale":"fr","description":""}]}]