Édouard Levé (1 January 1965 – 15 October 2007) was a French writer, photographer, and painter.

Early career

Levé was self-taught as an artist and studied business at the elite

École supérieure des sciences économiques et commerciales The École Supérieure des Sciences Economiques et Commerciales (more commonly ESSEC Business School or ESSEC) is a major French business and management school, with non-profit association status (French association law of 1901) founded in 1907 ...

. He began painting in 1991.Boris Daireaux,
Edouard aux mains d’argent(ique)
" ''Evene.fr'', November 2006 Levé made abstract paintings but abandoned the field (claiming to have burned most of his paintings) and took up color photographyJacques Morice,
L'écrivain et photographe Edouard Levé est mort
" ''Télérama'', 22 October 2007 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 non-existent conceptual artworks by the author, although some of the ideas were taken up as the premises of later projects actually completed 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.Hugo Wilcken,
Happiness, Sadness, Death
" ''The Berlin Review of Books'', 8 March 2010 ''Autoportrait'' consists entirely of disconnected, unparagraphed sentences of the authorial speaker's assertions and self-description,Zadie Smith, "New Books," ''Harper's Magazine'', May 2011, pp. 67–70. a "collection of fragments" by a "literary cubist." 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.

Reception and influence

A chapter in

Hervé Le Tellier Hervé Le Tellier (born 21 April 1957) is a French writer and linguist, and a member of the international literary group Oulipo (Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle, which translates roughly as "workshop of potential literature"). He is its fou ...

'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.

Awards and honors

*2013

Best Translated Book Award The Best Translated Book Award is an American literary award that recognizes the previous year's best original translation into English, one book of poetry and one of fiction. It was inaugurated in 2008 and is conferred by Three Percent, the onlin ...

, shortlist, ''Autoportrait''

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, 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 backgroundBernd Schwandt, "Group Photography as a Means of Communicating with Groups," in Fine and Schwandt (eds.), ''Applied communication in organizational and international contexts'', Röhrig Universitätsverlag, 2008, pp. 31f.) * 2003: ''Reconstitutions'', Philéas Fogg, (bringing together the restaged photographs of ''Actualités'' and ''Quotidien'') * 2006: ''Fictions'', P.O.L ("enigmatic" groups of black-clad people against a black backgroun

http://www.pol-editeur.com/index.php?spec=livre&ISBN=2-84682-147-X]) * 2006: ''Amérique'', Léo Scheer, (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 translation
2012,

Dalkey Archive Press Dalkey Archive Press is an American publisher of fiction, poetry, foreign translations and literary criticism specializing in the publication or republication of lesser-known, often avant-garde works. The company has offices in Funks Grove, Il ...

, * 2008: ''Suicide'', P.O.L
English translation
2011, Dalkey Archive Press,

References

External links

*Galerie Loevenbruck (Levé's artistic representation)
Photographsbiographybooksreviews and pressEditions P.O.L.
(Levé's publisher), including a video of the author reading from ''Œuvres''
Short essay on Levé's aesthetics, focusing particularly on ''Works''
*Written works online
Excerpt from Lorin Stein's English translation of ''Autoportrait''
(''Paris Review'')
Photo series ''Amérique''
*Obituary notices
''Libération''
by Philippe Lançon, 17 October 2007
by Jacques Morice
''Télérama'', 22 October 2007 *Adaptations/homages by other artists
Autoportrait(s)
an online graphic design tribute to Levé (Grand Prix ETPA 2010) by Anne Gardes

a 2008 theatrical work by Jade Duviquet, adapted in part from Levé's ''Autoportrait'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Leve, Edouard 1965 births 2007 deaths 2007 suicides 20th-century French male artists 20th-century French male writers 20th-century French painters French male painters French male writers French photographers Painters who died by suicide Suicides by hanging in France