2004-12-13

... ?

Guardian Unlimited | Arts features | 'The worse the break-up, the better the art'

Sophie Calle views the suffering that comes with the end of a relationship with uncontained glee. From a creative point of view, the worse the break-up, the better the art: even as she is experiencing pain, the artist in her is starting to calculate how best she can exploit it.

Her new book, Exquisite Pain, is the product of a period of intense grief she experienced 20 years ago - so bad that she packed up everything associated with the relationship and its end, and left it untouched in a box until she felt strong enough to deal with it.