Sophie Calle: Catalogue Raisonné of the Unfinished
An elegant compendium of Calle's unfinished, abandoned or "failed" works of art
"I have a horror of the finished. Death is final. The gunshot is final. The almost finished is life," said Pablo Picasso. "But," replies Sophie Calle, "when everything stops, what will become of the ideas that stagnate, that wait their time in boxes, in coffins? Before disappearing, it's necessary to make an inventory of sketches, attempts and abandonments, and bring intentions to life. A way of ending things." This volume follows the artist's 2024 exhibition À toi de faire, ma mignonne at the Musée Picasso in Paris, marking the first time that French artist Sophie Calle has showcased a selection of her unfinished or abandoned projects, which she also understands as her failures. These stories, stamped with a verdict in red indicating the reason for their incompleteness, offer a mirror to her True Stories, a book regularly reissued since 1994. In this eventful collection, which reveals all the submerged aspects of a body of work spanning several decades, we find the main motifs of her work, such as chance, chance encounters and, above all, her key idea of incompletion as a result, trial and failure as corollaries of artistic action—an echo of Picasso's philosophy from decades ago. In this book, Calle takes stock of a lifetime of artistic creation, and hints at future challenges. Sophie Calle (born 1953) is an internationally renowned artist whose controversial works often fuse conceptual art and Oulipo-like constraints, investigatory methods and the plundering of autobiography. The Whitechapel Gallery in London organized a retrospective in 2009, and her work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Hayward Gallery and Serpentine, London; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, among others. She lives and works in Paris.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Frieze
Nicholas Gamso
Her reputation as one of the great postmodern image-makers testifies to something impersonal: her native culture’s obsession with documentation and procedure, and the indefinite relation between an event or scenario, and the traces it leaves behind.
The Brooklyn Rail
Jonah Goldman Kay
Though it is presented as an act of artistic vulnerability and an inversion of the traditional catalogue raisonné, Calle’s publication still performs the genre’s core duties. 'Catalogue Raisonné of the Unfinished' immortalizes her practice as a self-critical, sometimes tongue-in-cheek exercise in a careful exchange between disarming vulnerability and tactical defensiveness
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It’s 272 pages, housed in a lay-flat, Swiss-bound, three-flap cover. It’s got thumb-index section tabs and button closures. It’s illustrated with 140 color reproductions and 60 black-and-white images. And it collects all of the unfinished or “failed” works of art so far conceived but abandoned by Sophie Calle in the course of a long career known especially for courting failure. Published to catalog the artist’s 2024 exhibition, À toi de faire, ma mignonne, this provocative inventory begins with a quote by Pablo Picasso: “I have a horror of something finished. Death is final. A revolver shot finishes off. The not completely achieved is life.” To which Calle responds: “But when my life comes to an end, what will become of all the ideas that went nowhere, waiting for their moment in drawers and boxes? Before I disappear, I decided to inventory the drafts, the attempts, the abandoned projects. To give life to my intentions. To finish the unfinished.” continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 8 x 10 in. / 272 pgs / 140 color / 60 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $45.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $64 GBP £36.00 ISBN: 9782330206918 PUBLISHER: Actes Sud AVAILABLE: 4/7/2026 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: WORLD excl UK FR BE CH
Sophie Calle: Catalogue Raisonné of the Unfinished
Published by Actes Sud.
An elegant compendium of Calle's unfinished, abandoned or "failed" works of art
"I have a horror of the finished. Death is final. The gunshot is final. The almost finished is life," said Pablo Picasso. "But," replies Sophie Calle, "when everything stops, what will become of the ideas that stagnate, that wait their time in boxes, in coffins? Before disappearing, it's necessary to make an inventory of sketches, attempts and abandonments, and bring intentions to life. A way of ending things."
This volume follows the artist's 2024 exhibition À toi de faire, ma mignonne at the Musée Picasso in Paris, marking the first time that French artist Sophie Calle has showcased a selection of her unfinished or abandoned projects, which she also understands as her failures. These stories, stamped with a verdict in red indicating the reason for their incompleteness, offer a mirror to her True Stories, a book regularly reissued since 1994. In this eventful collection, which reveals all the submerged aspects of a body of work spanning several decades, we find the main motifs of her work, such as chance, chance encounters and, above all, her key idea of incompletion as a result, trial and failure as corollaries of artistic action—an echo of Picasso's philosophy from decades ago. In this book, Calle takes stock of a lifetime of artistic creation, and hints at future challenges.
Sophie Calle (born 1953) is an internationally renowned artist whose controversial works often fuse conceptual art and Oulipo-like constraints, investigatory methods and the plundering of autobiography. The Whitechapel Gallery in London organized a retrospective in 2009, and her work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Hayward Gallery and Serpentine, London; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, among others. She lives and works in Paris.
