Annette Messager – Early encouragement from her father; abandoned art studies
Annette Messager was born on 30 November 1943 in Berck in the Pas-de-Calais in the North of France. Her father, an enthusiastic amateur painter, taught his daughter the basics of painting, and Annette often wandered through her local churches with her brother to admire the stained-glass windows and altar decorations. In 1962, she began a course at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, but broke it off prematurely in 1966. During this period, the artist had initially engaged in sculpture, creating various works in a surreal style, but then showed an ever-growing interest in photography. She demonstrated her talent in this field early on when she won a prize for photography awarded by Kodak in 1964. Messager subsequently travelled through Asia with a camera specially purchased in Hong Kong, and visited Japan, the Philippines, Cambodia, India and Israel, before finally landing in the USA for the first time.
Taxidermied animals, knitting, and embroidered handkerchiefs
In 1971, Annette Messager began her high-profile work series Pensionnaires, for which she used taxidermy as an artistic stylistic device for the first time. The impetus came from an invitation from the Parisian Germain Gallery to an exhibition on the theme of wool. Messager’s contribution took the form of a dead sparrow for which she had knitted a blanket. Since then, knitting – typically seen as a female house craft –found its way repeatedly into the French artist’s work and is part of her play with gender identities. With her choice of media, she set a strong accent early on against the prevailing currents of conceptual art. In the 1970s, embroidered handkerchiefs as a manifesto for feminism underscored the artist’s great originality, and she quickly generated a high level of attention with her unusual works. Messager experienced the student revolution first hand in 1968 and it had a lasting effect on her thinking and understanding of art; like her entire generation, she confronted the outmoded conventions of her time with scepticism and rebellion, which is reflected in her work still today.
Cuddly toys and taxidermy as recuring element
By using a wide variety of materials and styles, Annette Messager creates a very unique pictorial world in which black and white photographs of various body parts are adorned with cuddly toys, and plastic and soft toys confront each other in hostile stances. Such is the case in her work 2 Clans 2 Families, which is about the relationship between poverty and wealth – symbolised by the plastic and soft materials. Sometimes, she hangs artificial organs made of fabric on string from the ceiling in order to approach an understanding of the human body. In fact, Annette Messager’s art cannot exist without numerous stuffed animals and taxidermy, which obviously do not serve for childish play, but for relentless dissection from the artist’s sharp eye.
Annette Messager lives and works today in Malakoff near Paris. She is married to the French installation artist Christian Boltanski.
Annette Messager - Works that have already been sold at Kunsthaus Lempertz: