Louise Bourgeois: Drawings & Observations

Depicts drawings by an artist better known for her sculpture, and features interviews and comments by the artist

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