By Deborah Wye

 

Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait explores this celebrated artist's prints and books, a little known but highly significant part of Bourgeois's larger practice. Her copious production in these mediums—addressing themes that perennially occupied her, including memory, trauma, and the body—is examined here within the context of related sculptures, drawings, and paintings. This investigation sheds light on Bourgeois's creative process, which is uniquely and vividly apparent through the evolving states and variants of her prints; 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 catalogue features an insightful essay by former curator (and longtime friend of the artist) Deborah Wye, examining Bourgeois's involvement with these mediums alongside the developments of her long life and career. Interviews with three of the artist's close collaborators further illuminate her artistic practice and output, some three hundred examples of which are presented in this volume. 248 pp.; 357 illus.