Louise Bourgeois: Drawings & Observations [Anglais] [Relié]

One of this century's preeminent artists, Louise Bourgeois recently was the subject of a major one-person exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art, and she represented the United States in the 1993 Venice Biennale. This exquisitely designed volume, which includes 133 color reproductions, is a testimony to the importance of the act of drawing to this highly autobiographical artist, who is known primarily for her sculptures. Produced over the course of 50 years, the drawings are seen side by side with Bourgeois' own observations about her personal life, her work, and the genesis and sources of certain works, offering a very intimate vision of Bourgeois as a woman and as an artist, as well as insight into the creative act of making art.

Celebrated as an innovative sculptor and feminist, octogenarian Bourgeois is less well known for the naive chemistry of her quirky drawings. This compact publication is issued on the occasion of an exhibition of 130 of her memorably diminutive graphic compositions. All are illustrated in small-format color plates with a documenting checklist. The heart of the book, however, is the valuable text. Having interviewed Bourgeois over several days, Rinder (curator, 20th-century art, Univ. Art Museum, Berkeley) gained general insight into her work and recorded her specific commentaries upon 66 drawings, making them especially vibrant and more accessible to the viewer. Highly recommended for academic collections. (Ideally, specialist research libraries should already possess the earlier Louise Bourgeois Drawings, Robert Miller Gallery, 1988, for larger and better-quality reproductions.)-Mary Hamel-Schwulst, Towson State Univ., Md.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Bourgeois' abstract and constructivist sculpture is distinctly organic in form, often sexual in connotation, and always feminine in the most powerful sense of the term. Her work seems to arise from deep within the subconscious, a truth attested to in this hauntingly beautiful volume of her drawings and writings. Free from the weighty demands of her sculptural materials--alabaster, plaster, latex, bronze, and marble--Bourgeois on paper is able to more fluidly explore the images that obsess her: houses, self-portraits, eyes, water, and vegetation. Presented in chronological order beginning in 1938, and accompanied by the artist's tense, enigmatic, and tenacious commentary on her psychological predilections, these highly charged images reflect her lifelong quest for comprehension and deep belief in art as exorcism. Although accorded little critical attention until the 1970s when she was already in her sixties, French-born Bourgeois and her evocative drawings and magnificent sculpture have grown stronger, more daring, and more autonomous with each passing year. Donna Seaman