Louise Bourgeois: Memory and Architecture

Louise Bourgeois has been on a journey inspired by architecture for six decades, from the early realistic drawings of interiors she made upon her arrival in New York in the late 1930s, to the plaster Lairs of the 1960s, to the Cells and recent commissioned works of the 1990s In her figurative work she has drawn, painted, printed, and sculpted everything from skyscrapers, courthouses, and greenhouses to labyrinths, sanatoriums, towers, nests and of course the many different houses and buildings she has lived in over the years. Throughout her career Bourgeois' work has always had a strong and essential autobiographical element -- and this book illuminates an area of her life that has heavily informed her work, in addition to exploring the relationship of her sculpture to architectural forms.

Bourgeois (b. 1911) is a leading American sculptor best known for her definition and exploration of female/male relationships in wood, marble, and multimedia. Many of the works involve figures concurrently seen as an abstractly built environment, like the famous "The Blind Leading the Blind." This exhibition catalog from the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid records a total of 86 pieces from her "Femme Maison" series, the later "cells," the immediately recognizable spiders, and the highly successful recent environmental works. Bourgeois's symbolism is derived from painful autobiographical memories often related through the structures of home, work, and hallways. The lavish, full-page illustrations and color plates are bolstered by seven essays on her creative power. Three chapters "There's No Place Like Home," "The Architecture of Trauma," and "Passages Impliqués" are particularly relevant to untangling the Bourgeois world. Recommended as a fine, complete study of the artist with excellent references. For general art collections with an interest in contemporary art as well as feminist collections. Mary Hamel-Schwulst, formerly with Towson Univ., MD Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.