{"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","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_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,"category":{"en":"Book","nl":"Boek","fr":"Livre"},"poster_image":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/mhka_ensembles_production/assets/public/000/028/356/large/Untitled088.jpg?1430211365","poster_credits":null,"translations":[{"locale":"en","short_description":"","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","short_description":"","description":""},{"locale":"fr","short_description":"","description":""},{"locale":"ru","short_description":"","description":""},{"locale":"de","short_description":"","description":""},{"locale":"es","short_description":"","description":""},{"locale":"el","short_description":"","description":""}],"actors":[{"id":2098,"name":"Edouard Levé ","category":{"en":"Creator","nl":"Vervaardiger","fr":"Créateur"}}]}