CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 10/7/2018

Louise Bourgeois at Glenstone

Two of six panels from Louise Bourgeois's 2010 work on paper, "I Give Everything Away," these drawings are reproduced from Louise Bourgeois: To Unravel a Torment, published to accompany the exhibition currently on view at Glenstone Museum. "Universal themes of love, longing, motherhood and mortality are pervasive in the final years of Bourgeois’ life," Emily Wei Rales writes, "when works on paper took on greater significance as a creative outlet… Over multiple panels [in I Give Everything Away,] Bourgeois adapted six lines of a poem she first wrote in 1961 about childish petulance and coveting:

I want this toy, if you take it away from me, if I must
I fall into deep despair
I give everything away
I distance myself from myself
from what I love most
I leave my home
I leave the nest
I pack up my bag

In the drawing, Bourgeois inscribes the lines in wavering script, recasting the original narrative of grasping and self-loathing as a tender song of farewell and rebirth—dramatizing a moment of release from the psychological turmoil that afflicted her for so long."