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PUBLISHER
The Museum of Modern Art, New York

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 9 x 10.5 in. / 248 pgs / 340 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date
Active

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2017 p. 16   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9781633450417 TRADE
List Price: $55.00 CDN $72.50

AVAILABILITY
Out of stock

TERRITORY
NA ONLY

EXHIBITION SCHEDULE

New York
The Museum of Modern Art, 09/24/17–01/28/18

The prints and illustrated books of Louise Bourgeois shown in the context of related sculptures, drawings, and paintings

BOOKSELLER TRADE ANNOTATION

Accompanies a MoMA exhibition of American artist Louise Bourgeois' prints and artist's books
  • Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) was based in NYC from 1938 to her death. She is best-known for her organic, totemic sculptures--like giant spiders.
  • But Bourgeois made more than 1000 prints over the course of her career and even had a press in her basement. She was most active in printmaking in the 1940s and then in the 1990s and 2000s.
  • This book includes 330 of her prints and handmade books, organized by theme
  • A major appeal of this book is that her prints are her most accessible work -- and also her most colorful.
  • Her foundation (Easton Foundation) is in the process of turning her townhouse in West 20s into a museum.

  

THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK

Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait

By Deborah Wye.

Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait

This first thorough survey of Bourgeois’ prints and books orients these works within her broader practice

Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait explores the prints and books of the celebrated sculptor. This little-known body of work is vast in scope—numbering some 1,200 individual compositions—and highly significant within her larger practice. These works encompass the same themes and motifs that occupied Bourgeois throughout her career, and they are explored here within the context of related sculptures, drawings and early paintings. This investigation sheds light on Bourgeois’ creative process overall, most vividly through the evolving print states and variants that led to her final compositions; 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 catalog presents more than 270 prints and books, organized thematically, and includes an essay that traces Bourgeois’ involvement with these mediums within the broader developments of her life and career. It also emphasizes the collaborative relationships that were so fundamental to these endeavors. Included are interviews with Bourgeois’ longtime assistant, a printer she worked with side-by-side at her home/studio on 20th Street in New York and the publisher who, in the last decade of her life, encouraged her to experiment with innovative prints that broke the traditional boundaries of the medium. The volume is rounded out with a chronology and bibliography that focus on prints and illustrated books while also providing general background on Bourgeois’ life and art.

Born in Paris in 1911, Louise Bourgeois was raised by parents who ran a tapestry restoration business. She met Robert Goldwater, an American art historian, in Paris and they married and moved to New York in 1938. Early on, Bourgeois focused on painting and printmaking, turning to sculpture only in the later 1940s. In 1982, at 70 years old, Bourgeois finally took center stage with a retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art. She died in New York in 2010, at the age of 98.


Deborah Wye is Chief Curator Emerita of Prints and Illustrated Books at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Featured image is reproduced from 'Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait.'

PRAISE AND REVIEWS

Widewalls

Angie Kordic

Louise Bourgeois in a light we’ve never seen her before.

Manhattan Modern Luxury

...explores the quirky sculptur's lesser-known printed oeuvre.

Hyperallergic

Benjamin Sutton

The Print Legacy of Louise Bourgeois Unfolds at MoMA...A new exhibition gathers some 300 works, including 265 prints, to show the increasingly central role printmaking played in Bourgeois’s practice through the decades.

Forbes

David Alm

At MoMA, a portrait of Louise Bourgeois as a young and old woman.

The Maker Magazine

...opens a little-known dimension of the artist’s practice: prints and books, shedding light on Bourgeois’s creative process.

The Guardian

Jonathan Jones

The striking feminist art of Louise Bourgeois – in pictures.

Artsy

Zachary Small

What Louise Bourgeois’s drawings reveal about her creative process.

The Daily Beast

Tim Teeman

Spiders, bodies, and the New York sky: the big and small genius of Louise Bourgeois...In 'Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait' at New York's Museum of Modern Art, a survey of the sculptor's works reveals the roots of her practice and her inner pain and joy.

Blouin Art Info

...a rare archive of these works, which is highlighted at the exhibition along with special paintings on loan.

New York Magazine, The Cut

Rosanne Els

Revisiting Louise Bourgeois at MoMA...For seven decades, French sculptor Louise Bourgeois created art that often explored the female form, from sexuality to motherhood.

The New York Times

Roberta Smith

Louise Bourgeois: imagination unfolds in all dimensions...follows Bourgeois in light circling rhythms as she revisits previous subjects, expanding upon them or transferring them into more substantial media.

The Culture Trip

Rachel Gould

Louise Bourgeois’s long career began and ended with printmaking; she launched her legacy with the medium and returned to it in the years before her death in 2010. While Bourgeois is widely associated with her monumental spider sculptures, a new MoMA retrospective gives due attention to the practice that marked both the genesis and the evolution of her formidable oeuvre.

Arts Summary

It places these mediums within the context of the artist’s overall practice and sheds new light on her creative process.

Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait

STATUS: Out of stock

Temporarily out of stock pending additional inventory.

FROM THE ARTBOOK BLOG

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 9/22/2017

How we love the books and prints of Louise Bourgeois in MoMA's 'An Unfolding Portrait'

How we love the books and prints of Louise Bourgeois in MoMA's 'An Unfolding Portrait'

Featured image is the last of eight plates from Louise Bourgeois’ 1990 illustrated book, the puritan. It is reproduced from Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait, published to accompany the major MoMA survey of the artist’s prints and books on view starting September 24. The text on the verso side reads, “Later on he died right in his factory of refinement. Everyone worth talking about cried and cried. Of course no one could see his soul, not even his wife. But they said that his body was dry and they think he was a puritan.” continue to blog


FROM THE ARTBOOK BLOG

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 1/28/2018

Back in Stock! Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait

Back in Stock! Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait

We can never get enough of this spread from Ode à l’Oubli (2002), Louise Bourgeois’s first book of fabric collages. Pages are made of linen hand towels from the artist’s trousseau, some of which are embroidered with the new bride’s monogram: LBG (Louise Bourgeois Goldwater). The collages are made from remnants of Bourgeois's old garments. Read more in Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait, published to accompany the MoMA retrospective of prints and books that closes today. continue to blog


LOUISE BOURGEOIS MONOGRAPHS + ARTIST'S BOOKS

Louise Bourgeois: Persistent Antagonism

LOUISE BOURGEOIS: PERSISTENT ANTAGONISM

Walther König, Köln

ISBN: 9783753305202
USD $45.00
| CAN $56.95

Pub Date: 6/25/2024
Forthcoming


Louise Bourgeois: The Woven Child

LOUISE BOURGEOIS: THE WOVEN CHILD

Hatje Cantz

ISBN: 9783775751490
USD $55.00
| CAN $75

Pub Date: 4/12/2022
Active | In stock


Louise Bourgeois: Spiral

LOUISE BOURGEOIS: SPIRAL

Damiani

ISBN: 9788862086448
USD $50.00
| CAN $69.95

Pub Date: 2/19/2019
Active | Out of stock


Louise Bourgeois: To Unravel a Torment

LOUISE BOURGEOIS: TO UNRAVEL A TORMENT

Glenstone Museum

ISBN: 9780999802915
USD $50.00
| CAN $67.5 UK £ 45

Pub Date: 10/23/2018
Active | Out of stock


Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait

LOUISE BOURGEOIS: AN UNFOLDING PORTRAIT

The Museum of Modern Art, New York

ISBN: 9781633450417
USD $55.00
| CAN $72.5

Pub Date: 9/29/2017
Active | Out of stock


Louise Bourgeois: Autobiographical Prints

LOUISE BOURGEOIS: AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL PRINTS

Hayward Gallery Publishing

ISBN: 9781853323430
USD $18.00
| CAN $25.5

Pub Date: 5/24/2016
Active | Out of stock


Louise Bourgeois: The Spider and the Tapestries

LOUISE BOURGEOIS: THE SPIDER AND THE TAPESTRIES

Hatje Cantz

ISBN: 9783775739979
USD $40.00
| CAN $54

Pub Date: 7/10/2015
Active | In stock


Louise Bourgeois & Gary Indiana: To Whom It May Concern

LOUISE BOURGEOIS & GARY INDIANA: TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

Violette Editions

ISBN: 9781900828369
USD $75.00
| CAN $99

Pub Date: 10/31/2011
Active | In stock


Louise Bourgeois: Art to Read Series

LOUISE BOURGEOIS: ART TO READ SERIES

Hatje Cantz

ISBN: 9783775732277
USD $25.00
| CAN $34.5

Pub Date: 3/31/2012
Active | In stock


Louise Bourgeois: The Return of the Repressed

LOUISE BOURGEOIS: THE RETURN OF THE REPRESSED

Violette Editions

ISBN: 9781900828376
USD $45.00
| CAN $60

Pub Date: 5/31/2012
Active | In stock


Louise Bourgeois: The Fabric Works

LOUISE BOURGEOIS: THE FABRIC WORKS

Skira

ISBN: 9788857206547
USD $90.00
| CAN $115

Pub Date: 4/26/2011
Active | In stock