The roots of her exploratory and at times boundary-overstepping practice can be seen in one of her earliest creative endeavours, when she followed a new stranger each day as they went about their lives. The artist's childhood disregard for social and personal boundaries would evolve and become evermore evident in her art projects.
A work by Sophie Calle featured a photograph of the artist as a toddler and a typical autobiographical text, which read: "I was two.
Calle then photographed these recreations for her book Double Game, including Maria's "chromatic diet." In the book she wrote, "To be like Maria, during the week of December 8 to 14, 1997, I ate Orange on Monday, Red on Tuesday, White on Wednesday, and Green on Thursday. In California, she became interested in photography, learning to use photographic equipment and associated rudimentary techniques.
Unlike her detective-style work with strangers, this piece showcased the artist's equally passionate impetus to enroll people into her projects in a similarly anthropological way that would allow for an expression of human commonality in shared experiences.
This pointed study of strangers and herself would inject a "confessional" vein into the world of Conceptual art, in which personal lives and their ephemera were considered worthy fodder for exploration. After finishing school, Sophie Calle traveled around China, Mexico, and the United States for seven years.
While in California, she developed an interest in photography.
It is a prime example of her contribution to Conceptual art with her mode of taking a nominal proposition and carrying it out through the production of a work.
2. Oftentimes these "games" would spotlight and provoke ideas about intimacy, privacy, social engagement, interrelationship, absence, and presence.
Calle's first major work was entitled Les Dormeurs (The Sleepers) (1979).
The maximum story length was five minutes, and, the guests were instructed to leave, and have the guard wake Calle, if their story put her to sleep. But they know nothing."
Personality
Sophie Calle's hobby is to collect taxidermy animals and Victorian photographs of babies.
Angelique Chrisafis named Calle "the Marcel Duchamp of emotional dirty laundry" in the Guardian.
Quotes from others about the person
Interests
Connections
Sophie Calle has a boyfriend and has no children.
Father:
Robert Calle
Summary of Sophie Calle
Stripper, stalker, spy, and thief are all roles the quintessentially French Conceptual artist Sophie Calle has placed herself in toward understanding her own and others' physical and emotional biographies.
They take you to their restaurant. In 1999, she took Freud’s place in his former home and museum in north London, showing photographs of herself copying his poses and clothing. This series of images and texts is now available in book form, published by Siglio.
I think I have an ability because I believe in the construction of the idea."
"Establishing rules and following them is restful. It happened on a beach - Deauville, I think. She also installed a wedding dress on his famous couch. Although Calle has been criticized widely for invasions of privacy such as this, her actions provoked further reflection on the liberties of being an artist and the thin line between creative exploration and exploitation in art.
Artist's Book
1980
The Bronx
For this work, Sophie Calle's destination moved from the romance of Venice to the economically depressed streets of New York's South Bronx.
Calle's trade is a conceptual installation comprised of a combination of text and image.
Background
Sophie Calle was born on October 9, 1953, in Paris, France.