Louise Bourgeois

Sunday Read

“Louise Bourgeois is an artist who rarely makes to order and never makes to please” notes Frances Morris in her foreword of Rizzoli’s publication on French-American artist Louise Bourgeois. In alphabetical order, the book retraces and underlines the movements, emotions, persons and places that marked Bourgeois’s path as well as her most well-known art pieces.

The oeuvre of Louise Bourgeois’s is one of the most consequent and important of the late 20th century. Its complexity and resourcefulness is encompassed through Rizzoli’s publication. Arranged by letter, everything that inspired the artist is listed and explained accompanied by evocative quotes by the artist herself. The chapter C contains ‚Childhood’ for example. Here Bourgeois says “My childhood has never lost its magic, it has never lost its mystery, and it has never lost its drama. All my work of the last fifty years, all my subjects, have found their inspiration in my childhood.” ‘Choisy-le-Roi’, the village where her parents had a house and ‘Claustrophobia’ of which Bourgeois suffered. All these words are explained and illustrated one after the other. Characters who inspired her art and life such as Peter Bruegel, Le Corbusier or Louis, her father are all referred to in their relation to the female artist along with her revolutionary works The Destruction of the Father, Le Défi and Dagger Child. The whole book is rhythmed by illustrations of Bourgeois’s art pieces. The artist explains herself “Sculpture is a simple subliminal language. Few people know it or even understand it. It is a rare language.”

Rizzoli Publishing