Louise Bourgeois Knihy

Late textile works by the artist who helped pioneer the sculptural use of fabric in art This book provides a comprehensive overview of the fabric works from the last two decades in the career of legendary artist Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010). “I’ve always had a fascination with the needle,” she once said, “the magic power of the needle. The needle is used to repair damage. It’s a claim to forgiveness.”This body of work began when the artist started incorporating clothes from all stages of her life into her art, and later expanded to include a range of other textiles such as bed linen, handkerchiefs, tapestry, and needlepoint. The fabric works mine the themes of identity and sexuality, trauma and memory, guilt and reparation, and serve as metaphors for emotional and psychological states.The catalog―which accompanies the exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, London, and the Gropius Bau, Berlin―features works from numerous series, including the monumental Cell installations, figurative sculptures and abstract drawings.

Examines the sculptor's feminist and subversive works that often mingle human and animal forms

This fascinating diary by Louise Bourgeois, a midwife in 17th century France, offers an intimate look into the birth of Louis XIII. With a wealth of practical detail and personal observations, it provides a unique perspective on an important moment in French history. Whether you're a historian, a student of women's health, or simply enjoy a good story, this book is a captivating read.

Features pinks, purples, reds and blues that describe bodies comprising swollen bellies, heavy breasts, engorged phalluses and stooped torsos.

Features approximately 80 writings by Louise Bourgeois, which, combined with eight extensive scholarly essays turns our critical understanding of Bourgeois work on its head. This title shows the enduring presence of psychoanalysis as a motivational force and a site of exploration in her life and work.

Spirals are a recurring motif in the work of Louise Bourgeois, including her sculpture, painting, and drawings from as early as the 50s through 2010 the year of her death. It has two directions. Where do you place yourself, at the periphery or at the vortex? The spiral is simultaneously "the fear of losing control" and the experience of "giving up control; of trust, positive energy, of life itself." In another book Bourgeois is quoted as saying "The spiral is important to me. It is a twist. As a child, after washing tapestries in the river, I would turn and twist and wring them... Later I would dream of my father's mistress. I would do it in my dreams by wringing her neck. The spiral -- I love the spiral -- represents control and freedom." In materials as diverse as wood, steel, bronze, latex, marble, plaster, resin, hemp, lead, ink, pencil, crayon, woodcut, watercolor, and gouache, Bourgeois investigates every imaginable manifestation of the spiral, from graphic patterns to graphite whorls, wobbly orbits to chiseled vortices, twisted columns to coiling snakes, staircases, and pyramids. The cursive blue-paper word drawings, in English and French, complement the purely visual works by conveying the spirit of Bourgeois' poetry in extraordinary pictorial forms.

Louise Bourgeois hat sich gerne mit Eugénie Grandet verglichen, jener Titelheldin aus dem Roman von Honoré de Balzac, in dem ein von maßlosem Ehrgeiz und Geiz zerfressener französischer frühkapitalistischer Provinzler seine Familie im Namen kalter Profitmaximierung terrorisiert. Die Künstlerin, selbst Tochter eines patriarchal gesinnten französischen Unternehmers, identifizierte sich mit Eugénie, der Tochter von Grandet. Sie war für sie – auch im 20. Jahrhundert – der Inbegriff der unterdrückten, nicht emanzipierten Frau, der, wie sie sagte: „Prototyp der unerfüllten Frau“. Ein Schicksal, gegen das sich Louise Bourgeois ein Leben lang wehrte, und dies tatsächlich bis zum Ende, bis in die letzten Monate ihres Lebens (!), als sie einen Zyklus kleinformatiger, sehr zarter, filigraner Zeichnungen erstellte, dem sie den Namen Eugénie Grandet gab. Das Buch, das diesen Zyklus zum ersten Mal vorstellt und auch eine von der Künstlerin verfasste „Ode an Eugénie Grandet“ enthält, wird begleitet von einem klugen Essay von Jean Frémon, eines französischen Kunstkritikers, der eng mit der Künstlerin befreundet war und sie Monate vor ihrem Tod in New York noch zur Verwandtschaft mit ihrer fernen literarischen Schwester befragen konnte. Ein erhellendes – und überraschendes - Dokument, das neues Licht auf das Denken, Fühlen und Arbeiten der großen Bildhauerin wirft.