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.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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
