Louise Bourgeois [Paperback]

Robert Storr (Author), Paulo Herkenhoff (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2003 | Series: Contemporary Artists (Phaidon)

One of this UK's pre-eminent artists, Louise Bourgeois is a unique figure in contemporary art. Born in Paris in 1911, Bourgeois spent most of her career receiving little recognition from the art community. She has worked closely to many of the century's key artistic moments, from Surrealism to Abstract Expressionism to feminist-inspired art, and yet remains distinct from all these. An extraordinarily influential sculptor, she has worked, often experimentally, with materials varying from alabaster, plaster, latex, bronze, and marble to found objects. She is equally admired for her intimate drawings at times combining fragments of text (featured at Documenta 11, 2002) with her highly personal writings, which often address her long and complex life story. With the combined backdrops of a conflicted family upbringing and her father's tapestry restoring business (whose weaving provides a recurring symbol in her work); her struggles as an artist in a world reserved for men; as well as her experiences as a mother, the subjects of her work are as broad as the materials in which she expresses them. Themes such as the Other, the feminine and the masculine, the body as well as her own specific biography spin a tangled and intense, lifelong body of work of unusual profundity. Bourgeois has presented her work in many of the world's most prestigious museums, including a major one-person exhibition New York's Museum of Modern Art. In 1993 she represented the United States at the Venice Biennale.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

French-born Bourgeois emigrated to the U.S. in 1938, yet the nearly 60 years of adventurous work in sculpture, drawing, engraving and installation reproduced here reflects an admitted attempt to repair the childhood she escaped. In 150 illustrations (50 in color), we find a haunting, enigmatic exploration of sexuality and the home: ladders that lead only to the ceiling; a giant steel spider whose egg sac is a jar of blue fluid; arrays of abstract white marble forms that simultaneously suggest male and female genitalia, often placed in enclosed, almost soothing, roomlike settings. Bernadac, curator of graphic arts at the Paris Musee National d'art Moderne, treats Bourgeois's uncanny mix of domestic comforts and erotic terrors as pointing to the ultimate imbrication of our desires into the structures we create, formal or familial. Her interpretations, while sometimes didactic and often overshadowed by the artist's own commentary, provide a welcome chronological overview of this remarkable and still evolving career.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

This elegant volume is the second book about Bourgeois to appear in recent months, evidence of a surge of interest that Bernadac succinctly describes as "inversely proportional to the neglect" Bourgeois suffered for decades. Bernadac, former curator of the Musee Picasso, offers convincing explanations both for the art world's persistent blindness to Bourgeois' startlingly original, sensual, and challenging sculpture and for the sudden recognition of its power, integrity, and courageous beauty. Bernadac successfully combines biography with criticism throughout this chronological overview, enriching the experience of viewing Bourgeois' art, from her highly symbolic works on paper to her newest work, the "cells," mysterious and dramatic large-scale installations. These daring works have occupied the indefatigable Bourgeois since she entered her eighties five years ago. Fiercely independent, adept at creating provocative abstractions out of myriad materials, Bourgeois is "unclassifiable" and profoundly compelling, qualities attributable, Bernadac believes, to Bourgeois' perception of art as fetishistic. For Bourgeois, the making of art is a magical and curative act, deeply emotional and erotic, thus resoundingly universal. Donna Seaman --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Phaidon Press (May 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0714841226
• ISBN-13: 978-0714841229
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 9.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #312,287 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #100 in Books > Arts & Photography > Other Media > Conceptual

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good book for a good price, May 29, 2009

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Juggs "Norris" (London) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Louise Bourgeois (Paperback)

This, like many of the other Phaidon books is very well organized. My only complaint is it doesn't have many pictures of her soft sculptures. Other than that, I would highly recommend to someone who wants an introduction to her work.