Edouard Levé
Encyclopedia
Édouard Levé was a French
writer
, artist
, and photographer.
Levé traveled in the United States in 2002, writing Autoportrait and taking the photographs for the series Amérique, which pictures small American towns named after cities in other countries. Autoportrait consists entirely of disconnected, unparagraphed sentences of the authorial speaker's assertions and self-description, a "collection of fragments" by a "literary cubist." Zadie Smith
has admired the "adolescent aesthetic" of this work, its "mixture of thoughtfulness and self-regard, honest interrogation and mere posing."
His final book, Suicide,
although fictional, evokes the suicide of his childhood friend 20 years earlier, which he had also mentioned in "a shocking little addendum, tucked nonchalantly...into Autoportrait." He delivered the manuscript to his editor ten days before he took his own life at 42 years old.
’s novel Enough about Love pays homage to Edouard Levé, who appears as the character Hugues Léger, and to his book Autoportrait, the introspective and fragmentary style of which is imitated in an extract of a book titled Definition.
Gérard Gavarry’s book Expérience d'Edward Lee, Versailles (P.O.L., 2009) takes as its inspiration one hundred photos by Levé.
Other books
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
, artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
, and photographer.
Early career
Levé was self-taught as an artist and studied business at the elite École supérieure des sciences économiques et commerciales. He began painting in 1991. Levé made abstract paintings but abandoned the field (claiming to have burned most of his paintings) and took up color photography upon his return from an influential two-month trip to India in 1995.Books and photographs
Levé's first book, Oeuvres (2002), is an imaginary list of more than 500 books by the author, not actually written, although some of the items were taken up as the premisses of later books actually written and published by Levé (for example the photography books Amérique and Pornographie).Levé traveled in the United States in 2002, writing Autoportrait and taking the photographs for the series Amérique, which pictures small American towns named after cities in other countries. Autoportrait consists entirely of disconnected, unparagraphed sentences of the authorial speaker's assertions and self-description, a "collection of fragments" by a "literary cubist." Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith is a British novelist. To date she has written three novels. In 2003, she was included on Granta's list of 20 best young authors...
has admired the "adolescent aesthetic" of this work, its "mixture of thoughtfulness and self-regard, honest interrogation and mere posing."
His final book, Suicide,
Suicide (novel)
Suicide is a short novel by Edouard Levé noted for its precise language and seemingly random structure meant to imitate human memory.An excerpt of Suicide titled Life in Three Houses appeared in the April 2011 issue of Harper's.-Plot:...
although fictional, evokes the suicide of his childhood friend 20 years earlier, which he had also mentioned in "a shocking little addendum, tucked nonchalantly...into Autoportrait." He delivered the manuscript to his editor ten days before he took his own life at 42 years old.
Reception and influence
A chapter in Hervé Le TellierHervé Le Tellier
Hervé Le Tellier is a French writer and linguist, and a member of the international literary group Oulipo...
’s novel Enough about Love pays homage to Edouard Levé, who appears as the character Hugues Léger, and to his book Autoportrait, the introspective and fragmentary style of which is imitated in an extract of a book titled Definition.
Gérard Gavarry’s book Expérience d'Edward Lee, Versailles (P.O.L., 2009) takes as its inspiration one hundred photos by Levé.
Works by Levé
Photography series- 1999: Homonymes (portraits of ordinary people with the same names as famous people)
- 1999: Rêves Reconstitués
- 2000-2002: Angoisse, Philéas Fogg (photographs taken around the city of Angoisse (Dordogne), whose name in French means "anguish")
- 2001-2002: Actualités (staged and anonymized photos playing on the stereotypes of press photography)
- 2002: Pornographie (clothed models in pornographic positions)
- 2003: Rugby (models in street clothing posed in rugby positions sans ball)
- 2003: Quotidien (newspaper or magazine photographs, restaged with actors who are anonymized and in everyday clothing against a black background)
- 2003: Reconstitutions, Philéas Fogg, ISBN 2914498136 (bringing together the restaged photographs of Actualités and Quotidien)
- 2006: Fictions, P.O.L ("enigmatic" groups of black-clad people against a black backgroundhttp://artnews.org/gallery.php?i=1551&exi=2298&Loevenbruck&Edouard_Lev_http://www.pol-editeur.com/index.php?spec=livre&ISBN=2-84682-147-X)
- 2006: Amérique, Léo Scheer, ISBN 2756100641 (photographs from American towns sharing names with world cities)
Other books
- 2002: Oeuvres, P.O.L
- 2004: Journal, P.O.L (playing on journalistic stereotypes in the fashion of Actualités)
- 2005: Autoportrait, P.O.L; English edition forthcoming from Dalkey Archive PressDalkey Archive PressDalkey Archive Press is a publisher of fiction, poetry, and literary criticism in Illinois in the United States, specializing in the publication or republication of lesser known, often avant-garde works...
- 2008: SuicideSuicide (novel)Suicide is a short novel by Edouard Levé noted for its precise language and seemingly random structure meant to imitate human memory.An excerpt of Suicide titled Life in Three Houses appeared in the April 2011 issue of Harper's.-Plot:...
, P.O.L; English translation 2011, Dalkey Archive Press, ISBN 1564786285
External links
- Galerie Loevenbruck (Levé's artistic representation): Photographs, biography, books, reviews and press
- Editions P.O.L. (Levé's publisher), including a video of the author reading from Œuvres
- Written works online: Excerpt from the forthcoming English translation of Autoportrait (Paris Review)
- Photo series Amérique
- Obituary notices: by Philippe Lançon, Libération, October 17, 2007; by Jacques Morice, Télérama, October 22, 2007
- Adaptations/homages by other artists: Autoportrait(s), an online graphic design tribute to Levé (Grand Prix ETPA 2010); CQPVD, ou Ce que parler veut dire, a 2008 theatrical work by Jade Duviquet, adapted in part from Levé's Autoportrait