Customer Reviews

Louise Bourgeois Destruction of the Father / Reconstruction of the Father: Writings and Interviews, 1923-1997

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The artist's diaries reveal so much about her fascinating creativity. It is very helful to read her comments over the decades as wintess and participant to the changing art world. The Walters Art Museum is presently exhibiting 39 of her works in "dialogue" with works from our permananet collection of Ancient, Medieval and Renaissanc art through May 21st, 2006. If you are in Baltimore, please take advantage of this amazing opportunity. The text of the diaries (that covers over 60 years)was very helpful to both staff and docents/guides in preparing for our tours. I recomemnd this text to all students and professors of contremporary art.

I saw a film and the works of Louise Bourgeois at the Tate Modern in London while I was on vacation. She was a fascinating woman! Brutally honest with raw insight on her life, emotions, and works! Fascinating! This is a great book showing the many sides of this artist!

When I want to find out information about an artist I prefer to read their own thoughts about their life and art rather than reading critical essays about them by Art Historians and other experts. In this respect, 'Destruction of the Father / Reconstruction of the Father' is a very important anthology of writings by Louise Bourgeois that also includes interviews the artist gave over a period of seven decades.
The thing I like most about the book is that it is an eclectic collection that includes personal correspondence, autobiographical fragments, published artist statements and transcripts of interviews. Aside from the usual assortment of fully referenced, quotable extracts that would be very useful for those studying the work of this brilliant artist, I was most excited to discover reproductions in the book of a selection of little known fine-press publications written and illustrated by Bourgeois in the late 1940s. It was wonderful to see the series of grim parable sequences written and illustrated by Bourgeois reprinted alongside her later commentary about the texts.
I thoroughly recommend this book as essential reading for any Louise Bourgeois enthusiast. I, for one, am very pleased to own a copy.