Accompanies a MoMA exhibition of American artist Louise Bourgeois' prints and artist's books
Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) was based in NYC from 1938 to her death. She is best-known for her organic, totemic sculptures--like giant spiders.
But Bourgeois made more than 1000 prints over the course of her career and even had a press in her basement. She was most active in printmaking in the 1940s and then in the 1990s and 2000s.
This book includes 330 of her prints and handmade books, organized by theme
A major appeal of this book is that her prints are her most accessible work -- and also her most colorful.
Her foundation (Easton Foundation) is in the process of turning her townhouse in West 20s into a museum.
This first thorough survey of Bourgeois’ prints and books orients these works within her broader practice
Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait explores the prints and books of the celebrated sculptor. This little-known body of work is vast in scope—numbering some 1,200 individual compositions—and highly significant within her larger practice. These works encompass the same themes and motifs that occupied Bourgeois throughout her career, and they are explored here within the context of related sculptures, drawings and early paintings. This investigation sheds light on Bourgeois’ creative process overall, most vividly through the evolving print states and variants that led to her final compositions; seeing these sequences unfold is akin to looking over the artist’s shoulder as she worked.
Published in conjunction with an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, this catalog presents more than 270 prints and books, organized thematically, and includes an essay that traces Bourgeois’ involvement with these mediums within the broader developments of her life and career. It also emphasizes the collaborative relationships that were so fundamental to these endeavors. Included are interviews with Bourgeois’ longtime assistant, a printer she worked with side-by-side at her home/studio on 20th Street in New York and the publisher who, in the last decade of her life, encouraged her to experiment with innovative prints that broke the traditional boundaries of the medium. The volume is rounded out with a chronology and bibliography that focus on prints and illustrated books while also providing general background on Bourgeois’ life and art.
Born in Paris in 1911, Louise Bourgeois was raised by parents who ran a tapestry restoration business. She met Robert Goldwater, an American art historian, in Paris and they married and moved to New York in 1938. Early on, Bourgeois focused on painting and printmaking, turning to sculpture only in the later 1940s. In 1982, at 70 years old, Bourgeois finally took center stage with a retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art. She died in New York in 2010, at the age of 98.
Deborah Wye is Chief Curator Emerita of Prints and Illustrated Books at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Featured image is reproduced from 'Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait.'
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Widewalls
Angie Kordic
Louise Bourgeois in a light we’ve never seen her before.
Manhattan Modern Luxury
...explores the quirky sculptur's lesser-known printed oeuvre.
Hyperallergic
Benjamin Sutton
The Print Legacy of Louise Bourgeois Unfolds at MoMA...A new exhibition gathers some 300 works, including 265 prints, to show the increasingly central role printmaking played in Bourgeois’s practice through the decades.
Forbes
David Alm
At MoMA, a portrait of Louise Bourgeois as a young and old woman.
The Maker Magazine
...opens a little-known dimension of the artist’s practice: prints and books, shedding light on Bourgeois’s creative process.
The Guardian
Jonathan Jones
The striking feminist art of Louise Bourgeois – in pictures.
Artsy
Zachary Small
What Louise Bourgeois’s drawings reveal about her creative process.
The Daily Beast
Tim Teeman
Spiders, bodies, and the New York sky: the big and small genius of Louise Bourgeois...In 'Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait' at New York's Museum of Modern Art, a survey of the sculptor's works reveals the roots of her practice and her inner pain and joy.
Blouin Art Info
...a rare archive of these works, which is highlighted at the exhibition along with special paintings on loan.
New York Magazine, The Cut
Rosanne Els
Revisiting Louise Bourgeois at MoMA...For seven decades, French sculptor Louise Bourgeois created art that often explored the female form, from sexuality to motherhood.
The New York Times
Roberta Smith
Louise Bourgeois: imagination unfolds in all dimensions...follows Bourgeois in light circling rhythms as she revisits previous subjects, expanding upon them or transferring them into more substantial media.
The Culture Trip
Rachel Gould
Louise Bourgeois’s long career began and ended with printmaking; she launched her legacy with the medium and returned to it in the years before her death in 2010. While Bourgeois is widely associated with her monumental spider sculptures, a new MoMA retrospective gives due attention to the practice that marked both the genesis and the evolution of her formidable oeuvre.
Arts Summary
It places these mediums within the context of the artist’s overall practice and sheds new light on her creative process.
STATUS: Out of stock
Temporarily out of stock pending additional inventory.
Featured image is the last of eight plates from Louise Bourgeois’ 1990 illustrated book, the puritan. It is reproduced from Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait, published to accompany the major MoMA survey of the artist’s prints and books on view starting September 24. The text on the verso side reads, “Later on he died right in his factory of refinement. Everyone worth talking about cried and cried. Of course no one could see his soul, not even his wife. But they said that his body was dry and they think he was a puritan.” continue to blog
We can never get enough of this spread from Ode à l’Oubli (2002), Louise Bourgeois’s first book of fabric collages. Pages are made of linen hand towels from the artist’s trousseau, some of which are embroidered with the new bride’s monogram: LBG (Louise Bourgeois Goldwater). The collages are made from remnants of Bourgeois's old garments. Read more in Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait, published to accompany the MoMA retrospective of prints and books that closes today. continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 9 x 10.5 in. / 248 pgs / 340 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $55.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $72.5 ISBN: 9781633450417 PUBLISHER: The Museum of Modern Art, New York AVAILABLE: 9/29/2017 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: Out of stock TERRITORY: NA ONLY
Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York. By Deborah Wye.
This first thorough survey of Bourgeois’ prints and books orients these works within her broader practice
Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait explores the prints and books of the celebrated sculptor. This little-known body of work is vast in scope—numbering some 1,200 individual compositions—and highly significant within her larger practice. These works encompass the same themes and motifs that occupied Bourgeois throughout her career, and they are explored here within the context of related sculptures, drawings and early paintings. This investigation sheds light on Bourgeois’ creative process overall, most vividly through the evolving print states and variants that led to her final compositions; seeing these sequences unfold is akin to looking over the artist’s shoulder as she worked.
Published in conjunction with an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, this catalog presents more than 270 prints and books, organized thematically, and includes an essay that traces Bourgeois’ involvement with these mediums within the broader developments of her life and career. It also emphasizes the collaborative relationships that were so fundamental to these endeavors. Included are interviews with Bourgeois’ longtime assistant, a printer she worked with side-by-side at her home/studio on 20th Street in New York and the publisher who, in the last decade of her life, encouraged her to experiment with innovative prints that broke the traditional boundaries of the medium. The volume is rounded out with a chronology and bibliography that focus on prints and illustrated books while also providing general background on Bourgeois’ life and art.
Born in Paris in 1911, Louise Bourgeois was raised by parents who ran a tapestry restoration business. She met Robert Goldwater, an American art historian, in Paris and they married and moved to New York in 1938. Early on, Bourgeois focused on painting and printmaking, turning to sculpture only in the later 1940s. In 1982, at 70 years old, Bourgeois finally took center stage with a retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art. She died in New York in 2010, at the age of 98.
Deborah Wye is Chief Curator Emerita of Prints and Illustrated Books at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
