It happened, but its not real.

Reality, fiction, and autobiography in the work of Sophie Calle.

Luna Cohen-Solal
BA (Hons) Music and Visual Art
University of Brighton
November 2013

Abstract
This essay focuses on the strategies French artist Sophie Calle employs to blur the
boundaries between her artistic practice and her personal life. Subverting concepts of reality,
fiction, and autobiography, Calles practice consciously blurs the distinction between text and
paratext, expanding the notion of what might constitute an artwork. It will be argued that the
entirety of the artists interaction with the public sphere contributes to the construction of a
near-mythological figure of the artist Sophie Calle.
Calle manifests a Duchampian approach to art as she uses elements taken from the
world surrounding her as contents of her artworks. However the originality of her endeavour
resides in her ability to conceal the aesthetic decisions put into the production of works so that
they look like documentary, factual, authentic reports. Using theories by Roland Barthes and
Seymour Chatman, comparisons with artists like Cindy Sherman, and through a detailed
analysis of her works, this essay dismisses Calles claims to a non-theoretical, contentorientated practice.
By arguing that her approach allows authenticity and fiction to coexist, I conclude that
her use of such strategies reveals her to be an artist with a fluent understanding of semiotics,
and of postmodern notions of authorship and identity.

Contents

Introduction

Contextualization

Chapter One: Reality

Chapter Two: Fiction

Chapter Three: Autobiography

14

Conclusion

21

Bibliography

22

Word count: 4633.

INTRODUCTION

I stopped writing a diary when I started to be an artist.

Sophie Calle, California College of the Arts, 2011.1
Given that almost all of French artist Sophie Calles works use as starting points
events, situations, or objects taken from the world surrounding her, her remark comes as a
surprise. Yet it provides an insight into the complex relationship existing between her work
and her life. On the one hand, this statement could be understood as the renouncement of her
autobiographical tendencies in anticipation of a future outward-looking practice. On the other
hand, it suggests a transferring of these autobiographical tendencies into her new medium of
expression, and raises the question: to what extent is Sophie Calles life embedded in her
work?
This essay sets out to examine the contradictory strategies Calle employs in her
treatment of reality, fiction, and autobiography. Calle uses her artworks as well as her
public statements to blur the boundaries between fact, fiction, life, and art. Her work poses
questions about artistic approaches to truth and authenticity, and manifests a novel form of
autobiographical practice. By questioning categories of art and life, she engages with ideas
previously explored in the 20th century by artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Allan Kaprow.
Duchamps ready-mades opened up the possibility for any object or experience to be framed
and labelled as art, and Kaprow later investigated the subject of the blurring of the boundaries
between art and life through his practice of Happenings.2

1
CCAarts. Sophie Calle Photography Lecture Series. Uploaded 28 Sept 2011. YouTube.
Web. 11 May 2013.
2 For

more information, see Allan Kaprow, Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life. Ed. Jeff

Kelley. Expanded ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.

 2
This study will argue that Calles identity games and story telling strategies ultimately
give rise to a near-mythological figure, known as Sophie Calle, the construction of which is
her utmost artistic achievement.

CONTEXTUALIZATION
Beyond The Death of the Author.

Sophie Calles art practice is situated and extends from postmodern debates around the
function of the author. In his 1967 essay The Death of the Author, French theorist Roland
Barthes asserts that the act of writing coincides with the destruction of the entity writing, and
that the voice that can be heard is not that of the author but that of language.3 According to
Barthes, no text is original, and the author exists only as a function, and not as a subjective
consciousness. The Death of the Author stands as a landmark in literary theory, and had a
great influence on concepts of postmodernism, both in the visual arts and in literature.
Philosopher Michel Foucault discusses the function of author as originator of a piece
of writing in his text What is an author?, which was first presented as a lecture to the
Socit Franaise de Philosophie on 22 February 1969. For Foucault, the notion of work
[uvre] is as problematic as that of the author because its limits are unclear: where does the
work start; where does it stop? He argues that the figure of the author is constructed by the
reader; and that an author is never a singular identity, but represents a plurality of selves.

3
Roland Barthes, The Death of the Author. Image Music Text. Ed. and trans. Stephen
Heath. London: Fontana Press, 1977. 142-148.

 3
CHAPTER ONE: REALITY
The unreliable nature of facts, truth, and reality in the work of Sophie Calle.

Calles early piece Suite vnitienne offers a particular insight into her handling of fact
and fiction. For this project, she followed a man from Paris to Venice, and then extensively
around the streets of the Italian city. She followed him at a distance, taking furtive
photographs, and recording in writing the developments of the shadowing. The resulting piece
utilized various media, such as photographs, texts, both written and spoken, and maps. It was
presented as an exhibition and published as a book in 1980. A thorough analysis of the work
uncovers that its documentary appearance is deceptive. First of all, the chronological
annotations, which seem to attest the veracity of the account, are false. In the book, her trip
takes place between Monday 11 February 1980 and Sunday 24 February 1980; however the
reproductions of Calles original diaries evidence that she undertook her journey to Venice
between Monday 19 February 1979 and Sunday 4 March 1979.4 But more importantly, a
well-informed researcher will find that the pictures featured in books and exhibitions are not
the ones taken by Calle on her initial trip to Italy. Concerned that Henri B., the man she
followed, would lodge a complaint against her for invasion of privacy, she went back to
Venice with a couple of friends and re-took all the shots.5 These clarifications might seem
trifling but they demonstrate that the factual precision characteristic of Sophie Calles stories
is actually illusory.

4
Sophie Calle, and Jean Baudrillard, Suite Vnitienne. Please Follow Me. Seattle: Bay Pres,
1988: 4-72 and Christine Macel, ed, Sophie Calle, Mas-tu vue. London: Prestel, 2003: 68-69.
5

Ccile Camart, Une Esthtique de la Fabulation et de la Situation: Sophie Calle 1978-2007

[An Aesthetic of Storytelling and Situation: Sophie Calle 1978-2007]. PhD thesis Rennes 2,
2007. Microform. Bibliothque Nationale de France (2007) 73.

The discrepancy between documentary style and fictional content can be examined in
Calles True Stories. The book True Stories is a collection of short texts with accompanying
photographs. Its latest edition consists of forty-six stories, each telling an anecdote or
focusing on an object that had significance in the course of Calles life, such as a wedding
dress, a bed, or a break up. The presence of the adjective true in the title roots the texts into
reality and presents the stories as non-fictional accounts of events drawn from Calles
personal experience. This affirmation of truthfulness is supported by the matter-of-fact,
descriptive writing style, which art critic Robert L. Pincus described as cool, deadpan, and
presentational.6 Indeed, the narrator includes temporal indications almost systematically
I was eighteen, On 8 January 1981 and enumerates details The carrier delivered 1
bedstead, 1 box-spring, 1 mattress, the sheets I had slept in, 2 pillows, 2 pillowcases and 1
blanket.7
This is what Robert Storr refers to when he mentions the artfully matter-of-fact tone
and the stylistic nuance and economy of Calles stories.8 Her accounts seem stripped down
in the manner of factual reporting, as the short text The Bed exemplifies:

It was my bed. The one in which I slept until I was seventeen. Then my mother
put it in a room she rented out. On the 7th of October, 1979, the tenant lay

6
Robert L. Pincus, Sophie Calle: The Prying Eye. Sophie Calle: The Reader. London:
Whitechapel Gallery, 2009: 31.
7

Sophie Calle, The Bathrobe, The High Heel, Journey to California. True Stories.

Arles: Actes Sud, 2013: 15, 19, 81.

8

Robert Storr, The Woman Who Wasnt There. Sophie Calle: The Reader. London:

Whitechapel Gallery, 2009: 104-105.

 5
down on it and set himself on fire. He died. The firemen threw the bed out of
the window. It was there, in the courtyard of the building, for nine days.9

These notations may be seen as factual and essential to the account, and their delivery
neutral and objective. However one might analyse them as falling within the province of
literary strategy. In his 1968 essay The Reality Effect, Roland Barthes conducted an
analysis of texts by Gustave Flaubert and Jules Michelet with a view to demonstrate that some
descriptive elements, such as the barometer lying on top of a piano in Flauberts short story
A Simple Heart, do not fulfil any structural or aesthetic purposes but are determining in
creating an illusion of reality. Barthes thesis sheds light on Sophie Calles use of realistic
detailed descriptions as the concept of reality effect reasserts her narratives as works of art,
as opposed to documentary evidence. As clinical as it is, her aesthetic of understatement is
an artistic decision.10
American academic Seymour Chatmans theory of narrative, which looks at the
dichotomy between story and discourse, can be helpful when looking at Calles work.
Chatman explains that the story is the what in a narrative that is depicted, discourse is the
how.11 In her work, Calle subverts this dichotomy by concealing discourse as story: the
factual style she uses fixates the viewers attention on the content of the narratives rather than
on their form.

9
Sophie Calle, La Visite Guide [The Guided Tour]. Rotterdam: Museum Boymans-van
Beuningen, 1996: 5.
10

Yve-Alain Bois, Paper Tigress. Sophie Calle: The Reader. London: Whitechapel Gallery,

2009: 120.
11

Seymour Chatman, Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca:

Cornell University Press, 1978: 19.

 6
A similar strategy is at play in Calles photographic work in general. The photographs
in True Stories are presented as documentation of the event recounted in the adjoining text.
The High Heel, which follows The Strip-tease, tells the story of Calles fight with a
fellow stripper, during which her attacker hit her with a high-heeled shoe, causing her victim
to lose consciousness. It is accompanied by a photograph showing the artist unconscious on
the floor, which looks like evidence of the fight. However, one can follow Pincus line of
thought and question the truthfulness of Calles documentations.12 Indeed, it is most likely
that the photograph was not taken at the time of the incident but re-enacted later, after she
made the decision to turn this story into an artwork. The stylistic difference between Calles
photograph (fig. 1) and Nan Goldins self-portrait showing her injuries obtained from a
similar violent incident (fig. 2) reveals the presence of discourse, i.e. of formal aesthetic
considerations in the production of an image.

12
Pincus 32.

Figure 1:

Figure 2:

Sophie Calle, Le talon aiguille [The High

Nan Golding, Nan One Month After Being

Heel] Des Histoires Vraies [True

Battered 1984 Nan Goldin courtesy

Stories]. Arles: Actes Sud Editions, 2013:

Matthew Marks Gallery, New York.14

18-19.13

Many of the photographs that compose True Stories are images of found objects and
visual material, and are displayed as if a survey of personal items. The objects pictured show
traces of handling, whether it be the wedding dress spread out casually on a bed, the crumpled
embroidered sheets, or the hand-written piece of paper that shows a crease. Similarly, the
imagery that was not produced by Calle but simply reproduced in the book shows evidence
of being found: the scratches on the surface of old photographs, the remnants of adhesive
tape, or the pins that attach the picture to the wall. Objects and visual material are deliberately
presented as authentic, at once proof and illustration of the factual nature of the true story
printed next to them.

13
Image taken from http://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/La-Fille-du-Docteur--Talon-aiguille/C162B6C9EFE1E554
14

Image taken from http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-

photography/report/1939035/self-portrait-contemporary-photography#ixzz2kAr6OM3k

 8
In The Photographic Message, Barthes argues that photography is marked by a
dichotomy between connotation and denotation (which was previously formulated by linguist
Louis Hjelmslev).15 He notes that at first glance, a photograph seems to be purely
denotative, professing to be a mechanical analogue of reality.16 This is in keeping with
the impression that emanates from Sophie Calles photographs of True Stories. However, as
Barthes notes, this is an illusion: a photograph is an object that has been worked on, chosen,
composed, constructed, treated according to professional, aesthetic or ideological norms
which are so many factors of connotation.17 The consideration of the work of Sophie Calle
leads critic Patrick Frey to the same idea: Like no other medium, photographs fake the fact
of their relation to reality.18

15
As defined by Barthes in this essay, denotation refers to the literal meaning of a statement,
and can be associated with Chatmans notion of story, whereas connotation refers to the way
the statement is communicated, which Chatman defines in terms of discourse.
16

Roland Barthes, The Photographic Message. Image Music Text. Ed. Stephen Heath.

London: Fontana Press, 1977: 18-19.

17

Ibid, 19. Barthes analysis concerns press photographs but his arguments can be generalized

to photography as a whole.
18

Patrick Frey, Tombstones Inscriptions Photographs Captions: The Hyperfiction of Life

and Death. Sophie Calle: The Reader. London: Whitechapel Gallery, 2009: 69.

 9
CHAPTER TWO: FICTION

I would argue that the essence of Sophie Calles artistic practice lies within the
fictionalization of autobiographical material. Her physical engagement in artistic projects, the
documentation produced, and her public discourse about issues of reality and fiction are
carefully constructed to fit into the creation of her artists figure.

Is art the doing or the showing?

A process Calle employs on many occasions is the initiation of situations and events
that look like ordinary endeavours, but are given artistic significance by the formats and
frames that mediate them. For The Shadow (1981), she got her mother to hire a private
detective to follow her and document her every movement, and later exhibited the
photographs taken by the detective, his written report, and her own account of the shadowing.
For Journey to California (2003), her bed was shipped to an American man who had written
to her asking if he could spend some time in it, and Calle exhibited textual and photographic
documentation of the shipping as well as her communication with the man in question.
None of the actions executed (hiring a detective, shipping an item) are immediately
identified with artistic gestures. However, they still seem disconnected from ordinary
behaviour: how often does one request to be followed by a private detective, or send a bed
from Europe to America for a few months? Moreover, the choice of photography and text,
traditionally used as means of artistic expression, Calles status as an artist, and the
exhibition-context in which the work is experienced, encourage the viewer to perceive the
experiments as an essentially artistic exercise. This argument raises the question of
documentation: how does the artist document her processes and how does it influence the way
that her work is perceived?

 10
This point of friction can be discussed through the analysis of her piece Suite
vnitienne, mentioned previously in this essay. One can wonder if the artistic gesture resides
in the act of shadowing or in its documentation. If on the one hand the focus of the work is the
artists acts, envisaged as performance, then the resulting documentation comes across as a
mere trace, belonging to the features of life that surround the practice of art. If on the other
hand the act of following is considered as being a manifestation of Sophie Calles personal
interests, its conveyance and framing become the place where art operates. Both affirmations
are valid; and the strength of Calles work proceeds from this inherent ambivalence between
art and life, this permanent questioning of both categories.

The editing process as fabrication strategy, or how can authenticity and fiction
coexist.

The film No Sex Last Night was shot on the road trip Sophie Calle and Greg Shephard
undertook in 1992, starting in New York on 3 January, climaxing with their wedding in Las
Vegas, and terminating in California a month or so later. Each carrying a video camera, they
filmed their surroundings, and since the couple did not talk to each other, they recorded their
thoughts, Calle talking to the camera in French, a language Shephard cannot understand, and
the latter whispering in English. The images are intimate, as they film each other, the
moments spent in the car, driving through American landscapes, and stopping off at motels
and diners. Moreover, the lo-fi quality of video footage, the confidential tone of their voices,
and the overly intimate subject matter of the disintegration of a couple make the film seem
like a faithful documentary of a personal experience. Yet the story of a bittersweet road trip
also evokes romantic topo, and when Calle talks about the film, she is adamant that it is a
fictional product. She evokes the importance of the editing stage:

 11

When we edited the film thats when fiction came in []. We could have
made ten different films that wouldnt have anything to do with each other, all
of them made from the same material. We have chosen, for him his
relationship with his car, for me the relation with our love life, but we could
have chosen other angles.19

The fabrication therefore occurs within the editing process, in the selection of some
footage material over another, and the construction of a storyline. This strategy exemplifies
Sophie Calles process as an artist: although most of the material she uses is authentic in the
sense that it has happened, her pieces must be treated as constructions because they consist of
fractions of an experience, which cannot be considered a truth. Calle herself voices this idea
in Victoria Clay Mendozas documentary: it happened, but its not real.20 Hence the sum of
the fragments Calle delivers in her work constructs a character that is in no way equal to her
real self, which includes areas that the viewer does not even suspect. As Robert Storr analyses
it, the self [is] thoroughly concealed by incomplete versions of her experience.21 The use of
the editing process as an artistic strategy allows fact and fiction, authenticity and construction
to coexist in Calles artworks.

19
Bertram Dhellemmes, Calle, Cadillacs, Cameras Tausend Augen 7 (1996): 6.
20

Victoria Clay Mendoza, Sophie Calle, Sans Titre. Empreintes: la Collection

Documentaire. France 5, Paris, 30 Mar. 2012. Television. INA, 23 Sept. 2013.

21

Robert Storr, Sophie Calle. Sophie Calle: The Reader. London: Whitechapel Gallery,

2009: 107.

 12

Ambiguous attitudes towards issues of truth and fiction.

The ambivalence between truthfulness and construction is reflected in Calles public

statements. The artists discourse about her work is indeed evolutive, if not contradictory.
When invited to give a talk at Keio University in Tokyo on 15 November 1999, she begins
her lecture by affirming she prefers personal, even indiscreet questions to technical ones.22
This suggests that her wish is to create a bond with her audience, and that she does not mind
exposing her personal life. However, it might be argued that she expresses this wish so that
her audience focuses on the content of her narratives and forgets about the technical aspects
and artistic decisions involved in the process of putting them into form. The same mechanism
is at work when she complains that some of her audience do not believe in the truthfulness
of the material she uses. In a radio interview, she cites the example of a newspaper article that
doubted the veracity of her mothers diaries, which she read out at the Avignon Festival in
July 2012, and adds: everybody thinks Im lying.23 But surprisingly, when journalists ask
about the connections between her work and her life, her reaction is a mildly irritated one:

People imagine that I disclose everything about my life; but actually, I only tell events
that are likely to give rise to an artwork, to a text, to an image. Otherwise, I dont
make a show of my existence, as one does in a diary or in a blog.24

22
Valentine Cruse, "Parcours Pdagogique : Sophie Calle." Centre Pompidou, Jan. 2004.
Web. 28 Oct. 2013.
23

Frdric Tadde, Sophie Calle. Le Tte tte. France Culture, Paris, 30 Sept. 2012.

Franceculture.fr. Web. 13 May 2013.

24

Annick Colonna-Csari, Interview Loto: Sophie Calle. LExpress 29 May 2013: 98.

 13
This aversion of self-exposure confirms that her repeated remarks about the personal,
true content of her pieces is a strategy to avoid addressing formal considerations about her
artworks, and critical debates such as artists relationship to authenticity. Furthermore, by
repudiating the confessional style characteristic of diaries and blogs, she reasserts her practice
as art making and fabrication, as opposed to exhibitionism and autobiography.
The title of her 2003 retrospective at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, Mas tu vue,
epitomizes the ambiguity of Calles attitude. This clause, which translates by Did you see
me, oscillates between exhibitionism and inscrutability. On the one hand, it may denote that
she is seeking confirmation from the spectator that her actions are witnessed. Moreover it
connotes the French substantive mas-tu-vu, which designates a show-off, as the back
cover of the English edition of the exhibition catalogue explains.25 This understanding
supports the hypothesis that Sophie Calles practice is an art of exhibitionism when it is not
one of voyeurism. On the other hand, the question can be understood in the strictest sense,
asking for a sincere answer: Did you really see Sophie Calle? One is tempted to say no,
as the impression of autobiographical reality is a deception, and the study of her body of work
does not give access to her intimacy.

25
Christine Macel, ed, Sophie Calle, Mas-tu vue. London: Prestel, 2003: back cover.

 14
CHAPTER THREE: AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Towards the construction of a personal mythology.

Some of Calles projects derive form artistic decisions but require a commitment that
extends beyond the working hours of the artists life. For the series Where and When (20082009), she asked fortune-teller Maud Kristen to dictate all of her actions for a certain period
of time. Kristen read tarot cards to determine itineraries for the artist to follow, leading her to
the French seaside town of Berck, and then to Lourdes, famous for being a Christian
pilgrimage destination. Calle phoned the clairvoyant at various points in her trip and asked for
directions prescribed by the cards.26 By submitting herself to a fortune-tellers instructions for
the purpose of an artwork, Sophie Calle acts out the interweaving of art production and
everyday living. But although her rituals and games demand extended physical commitment,
she makes it clear in various radio interviews that she is the only one to decide on the rules of
the game, and that whether she follows them, stops altogether, or finds a compromise is not a
matter of life and death. She remarks: I can stop whenever I want, since no one is holding
a gun to my head.27

26
The resulting books and exhibitions put together texts detailing card reading sessions,
accounts of the journey, and thoughts, as well as photographs, videos and souvenirs collected
on the way.
27

This minimal degree of engagement and risk can be differentiated from Chris Burdens

commitment to artworks like Shoot (1971), for which he asked his assistant to shoot him from
a distance with a rifle and consequently received a bullet in his arm.
See Laure Adler, Sophie Calle. Hors-Champs. France Culture, Paris. 13 Apr. 2011.
Franceculture.fr. Web. 13 May 2013 and Frdric Tadde, Sophie Calle. Le Tte tte.
France Culture, Paris. 30 Sept. 2012. Franceculture.fr. Web. 13 May 2013.

 15
Where and When is not the first instance of the artist handing over decision-making to
a third party: it occurred formerly in the course of her complex collaboration with the
American writer Paul Auster. This prolonged interplay between art and life, reality and
fiction, started when Auster drew inspiration from Sophie Calle to create the character of
Maria Turner, whose novelistic actions correspond almost word for word to a few of the
artists pieces.28 Auster added to those direct appropriations two of his own invention, which
Calle then decided to re-enact. Thus, The Chromatic Diet (1997) and Days Under the Sign of
B, C & W (1998), though born as fictional works, came to life and integrated with the French
artists practice. This is the only occurrence in which reality emulates fiction in Calles
practice, as her projects usually take facts as starting points, and yet it illuminates her entire
body of work as being a constant negotiation between fact and fiction.
She initiated another development of the game when she asked the writer to create a
character she would then endeavour to embody. Instead, Auster sent her Personal Instructions
for SC on How to Improve Life in New York City (Because she asked). To some extent this
text epitomizes the dialectics of art and life: it is the result of a request formulated from an
individual to another, and resembles a friendly piece of advice more than a work of fiction.
Correspondingly, Calle used it as so many guidelines to direct a particular moment of her life.
She chose the ordinary setting of a New York telephone booth to enact simple actions (smile,
talk to strangers, give out sandwiches and cigarettes). However all the aforesaid events,
which are archetypal, everyday gestures, are treated as an artistic project and fully
documented in an artists book, entitled Gotham Handbook and co-signed with Paul Auster.
Once again, the analysis of Sophie Calles work reveals the ambiguous posture it assumes,

28
This initial case of reality-inspired fiction is already problematic, because although Calles
pieces are real in the sense that they have an existence in the material world as opposed to a
fictitious one, they are explorations of reality and fiction in their own right.

 16
questioning categories of art, life, fiction, and reality. She does not give life priority over art
belittling it as imitation in favour of a more real experience, nor does she elevate art above
life as a necessary agent of sublimation and transcendence.

Calle systematically relates her artistic activities to her personal life, setting up rituals
and constraints that demand physical engagement, or expanding on the impact her practice
carries onto her private life. In Clay Mendozas documentary, she claims that she initiated
her film No Sex Last Night (1992) for personal reasons to delay the breakdown of her
relationship with Greg Shephard , rather than out of artistic interest; and declares: I used the
artwork as an excuse to live with a man.29 She suggests that the project achieved its goal
when asserting that [it] acted as a couple therapy.30 By presenting her practice as being
secondary to her emotional life, and discussing artworks in terms of their positive effects on a
private relationship, Calle actively sows confusion between artistic and non-artistic intentions,
and public and private realms. Further layers of complexity are added when she delivers the
same narrative as part of her piece True Stories, this time blurring the boundaries more
specifically between artistic content and paratext.31 In the context of this essay, paratexts refer
to Calles expression and declarations that do not belong to the substance of artworks. They
include interviews, lectures, documentaries, and the like. Calle, however, consciously blurs
the distinction between artwork as text and commentary as paratext, and challenges the idea
that truth and fiction should be neatly confined to one or the other.

29
Victoria Clay Mendoza, Sophie Calle, Sans Titre. Empreintes: la Collection
Documentaire. France 5, Paris, 30 March 2012. Television. INA, 23 Sept. 2013.
30

Dhellemmes 5-8.

31

Sophie Calle, Des Histoires Vraies [True Stories]. Arles: Actes Sud Editions, 2013: 71.

 17
For example, when she recalls her childhood and teenage memories on a radio show
as intimate as the first time she had sex , some anecdotes overlap with narratives taken from
True Stories.32 However the context is different; the medium of radio, coupled with the norms
of the artist interview, reinforces the idea of truthfulness and personal autobiography.33
Calle uses her public statements to deliberately hinder any attempt to distinguish her artworks
from her private life based on the context of delivery of the anecdotes. Commentaries on her
work found in the media are liable to be corrupted by this absence of distinction between her
real-life experience and her artistic projects.
Photographs that show the artists image are used with the same intention. A
connection can be established between Calles self-portraits and Cindy Shermans treatment
of her image for the creation of fictional characters. Indeed, Shermans use of clothing, wigs,
and make-up (fig. 4) highlights the constructed nature of self-portrait as an artistic exercise,
and suggests that the formal simplicity of Calles portraits (fig. 3) also falls within the scope
of aesthetic composition. Furthermore, because they create an impression of authenticity, the
artists self-portraits are instrumental in her strategy for blurring the boundaries between

32
Such as the narrative entitled Attendez-moi [Wait for me].
See Mazarine Pingeot and Jean-Michel Djian. Sophie Calle. La Part denfance. France
Culture, Paris. 3 Aug. 2012. Franceculture.fr. Web. 13 May 2013 and Calle, Des Histoires
Vraies 91.
33

It is the very same manipulation technique that Orson Welles used when he read The War

of the Worlds on public radio in 1938. Because radio broadcasts are associated
with information more than with fiction, American listeners believed that Martians were
invading New York City.

 18
autobiography and artistic practice. They are thus symptoms of a conscious exploitation of her
own image, which she wears like a mask to simulate autobiography.34

Figure 3:

Figure 4:

Sophie Calle, Le nez [The Plastic Surgery]

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #359 2000.36

Des Histoires Vraies [True stories]. Arles,

Acted Sud, 2013: 10.35

34
Storr 105.
35 Image taken from http://arttattler.com/commentarysophiecalle.html
36 Image taken from

http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2012/cindysherman/gallery/chronolo
gy/#/136/z=true

 19
Calles photographic self-portraits mirror her literary use of the first person, which
advances her association with the genre of autobiography. The relation between Calles work
and the concept of autobiography is ambivalent, and the discussion would gain from an
insight into literature theory. Philippe Lejeune defined autobiography as an instance when
author, narrator, and protagonist are one and the same.37 Lejeune brings to light the existence
of an autobiographical pact, which is implied between reader and writer and binds the latter
to sincerity.38 Sophie Calle plays with expectations and subverts both of Lejeunes principles.
Before being published as a book in 1994, True Stories existed as an exhibition of framed
photographs and texts, under the name Autobiographies.39 Both titles claim to deliver
autobiographical reality, and the content of the narrative seems to meet the authors actual
life: the main characters name is Sophie, she makes art, had a love affair with Greg
Shephard, spent a night on the top of the Eiffel Tower in 2002, However the preceding
analyses demonstrated that her works cannot be used as autobiographical documents; thus
Serge Doubrovskys concept of autofiction might be put forward to account for this complex
interweaving of autobiographical and fictional narratives.

37

Philippe Lejeune, The Autobiographical Pact. On Autobiography. Ed. Paul John Eakin.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989: 4.

38

Lejeune 18.

39

This is listed in the Catalogue raisonn of the works established by Ccile Camart as an

appendix to Mas tu vue, the catalogue for the retrospective of Calles work exhibited in Paris
in 2003. See Sophie Calle, Mas-tu vue. Ed. Christine Macel. London: Prestel, 2003: 434.

 20
By blurring the boundaries between artwork and commentary, text and paratext,
Calles practice contributes to building a personal mythology made of recurring anecdotes
that become legends.40 Calle rarely gives interviews French academic Ccile Camart
counts hardly a dozen between 1980 and 2007 and when she does, she tells the same
stories.41 In her PhD thesis, Camart suggests that Calle's public statements are parts and
parcels of an artistic strategy directed at the construction of the artists figure, a symbolic
persona that stands midway between a fictional character and the person of the artist.42 This
figure, which is reminiscent of a brand image, is Sophie Calles masterpiece.

40
The hypothesis developed in this essay takes up Harald Szeemanns idea of personal
mythologies, which he evolved in the early 1970s to critique the work of French sculptor
Etienne Martin.
41

Camart 188.

42

Camart 22.

 21
CONCLUSION

This exploration of the work of Sophie Calle has evidenced that the entirety of her
interaction with the public sphere fits within an artistic strategy. In her texts and photographs,
she uses the aesthetic of documentary evidence to toy with notions of factual truth and reality.
She engages in physical, performative acts to blur the boundaries between her artistic
production and her daily life. The selection and framing of material taken from her personal
experience was identified as a technique of fictionalization that brings meaning to the
contradictory statement It happened, but its not real. Her public statements were also
studied in the light of her constant subversions of self-exposure and autobiography; indeed
they challenge the dichotomy between fictional artwork and sincere commentary.
Calle develops her narratives across all media and contexts to blur ideas of identity.
Her practice fits in Barthes definition of narrative: who speaks (in the narrative) is not who
writes (in real life) and who writes is not who is.43 Sophie Calles strategies contribute to
constructing a near-mythological figure of the artist Sophie Calle. It would be difficult to
imagine someone writing a biography of Calle, because, as Ccile Camart argues, she is
already composing "a biography of the artist written by the artist."44
Ultimately, all of Sophie Calles processes, strategies, and choices are manifestations
of her artistic practice. This holistic approach to art reveals that she is fully aware of the
implications of semiotics, and that her work is steeped in postmodern discourses of authorship
and plural identities.

43
Roland Barthes, Structural Analysis of Narratives. Image Music Text. Ed. Stephen Heath.
London: Fontana Press, 1977: 111-112.
44

Camart 150.

 22

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 27
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