Now, Now, Louison

The imaginary interior monologue of artist Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010), addressing herself as 'you', as she recollects and goes over her life and work. In a fragmented narrative progressing by image and word associations, Jean Fremon gives the reader a sense of fascinating and moving proximity to his world-renowned friend, from her childhood to her last day, and back. His phosphorescent poem-in-prose evokes Bourgeois's history and inner life with seismographic precision: her relationships with her family, with her adoptive country (the USA), with other artists and her assistant. The voice of this grande dame of the art world (and its shameless old lady), famous for her insolence and humour, all come to vibrant life again through the words of a most discrete, masterful writer.

JEAN FREMON is a French author born in 1946, and the director of Galerie Lelong in New York and Paris. Since 1969, he has published a number of works of fiction, poetry, as well as essays on art, many of which have been translated into Spanish, and in English, praised by John Ashbury and Paul Auster. In France he is published by Editions POL, and was a long-time friend of Paul Otchakovsky-Laurens (1944-2018). In 1981, Fremon co-founded Galerie Lelong (formerly known as Galerie Maeght) in Paris. The New York gallery opened a few years later. In 1985 he curated Louise Bourgeois' first European exhibition, in Paris. Thirty years later, he organised her last exhibition, curated by the artist, at the Maison de Balzac in Paris. Some of the artists with whom he has worked the most closely include Antoni Tapies, Donald Judd, Jannis Kounellis, Sean Scully and David Hockney.