FUCK YEAH, NEW SOPHIE CALLE!!! Which I stumbled upon by total accident while looking for a digitized version of a previous Sophie Calle piece (which I’ve not yet found).
Her latest work, “On the Hunt,” is an exclusive for the November 2020 issue of Wallpaper* magazine. Editor-in-Chief Sarah Douglas writes in the issue’s introduction,
Dear readers,
Welcome to our November issue – our annual art special – which is dedicated to natural splendour. It is an enormous honour to welcome French conceptual artist Sophie Calle, who graces our limited-edition subscribers cover with a self-portrait of her camouflaged as a tree. The image is part of Sophie’s new project, A l’Affût (On the Hunt), which we are proud to present in an exclusive 20-page portfolio, translated into English for the first time. The project began when Paris’ Museum of Hunting and Nature invited her to exhibit. Combing through archival copies of the hunting magazine Le Chasseur Français, Sophie was drawn to its lonely hearts ads and soon discovered parallels between the hunt for game and the matrimonial chase. And so she went through 125 years of matrimonial ads, grouping them by decade and theme (my favourite being ‘1930-1940: Hard worker, mildly modern’), and juxtaposing them with her photographs of hunting watchtowers, symbolising predators, and highway surveillance images of animals at night, symbolising prey. Far from glorifying a contested sport, Sophie seems to suggest that, for all the trappings of civilisation, we’ve more in common with the natural world than we often recognise.
More than any other living artist, she discovers humour, wisdom and grace within humanity’s mundane moments…
The feature opens with a brief bit on Sophie, then straight into the piece.
Above left (the lack of a period at the end of “happy hunting” is K I L L I N G me):
ON THE HUNT
Inspired by 125 years of lonely hearts ads, gleaned chiefly from a French hunting magazine, artist Sophie Calle’s latest project explores the thrill, and the mundanity, of the matrimonial chase. Here she shares selected excerpts. Having catalogued adverts by theme and date (overleaf ), she pairs original French text with images of hunters’ miradors and night-time prey, before offering further imagery and English translations. Happy hunting
Above right:
RULE OF THE GAME
A catalogue of the main qualities sought by men in female partners, and by women in male partners, as seen through a selection of lonely hearts advertisements published in Le Chasseur Français between 1895 and 2010. A monthly magazine dedicated to hunting, Le Chasseur Français is also known for its personal ads. It was first published in June 1885. Publication was stopped by the government between August 1914 and July 1919 because of paper shortages. The classified ads initially focused on guns, cows and dogs. The first lonely hearts column appeared on 15 July 1896, on page 40, between ads for a wood treatment product and an investment scheme. From the 1990s onwards, the study includes men’s advertisements taken from the weekly current affairs magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, and the online dating service Meetic. For the years 2017 and 2019, the study also includes messages from the dating app Tinder.
Following the introduction, straight into the “catalogue of the main qualities sought by men in female partners…”
“…and by women in male partners…”
The Wallpaper* feature includes a few photos of Sophie’s original exhibit, in French.
Following photos of the French originals are English translations paired with photos, spanning seven spreads (14 pages).
Also, peep that rubrication and those manicules! Love!
Thoroughly in love with everything this woman creates.
View the entire November 2020 Wallpaper* issue, or only the pages that feature Sophie and her work.