Louise Bourgeois

Untitled, plate 4 of 8, state III of III, variant, from the puritan

1990

Engraving, with hand additions

Not on view

In 1990 Bourgeois published an illustrated book titled the puritan, pairing a text she had written in 1947 with a new series of eight prints, all with hand painted gouache additions. The text of the puritan is an enigmatic parable of lost love set in New York City. Bourgeois described the ordered geometry of the images as a tool of objective understanding: “With the puritan I analyzed an episode forty years after it happened. I could see things from a distance . . . I put it on a grid.” The text may have biographical implications; Bourgeois had referred to her friend Alfred H. Barr, Jr., the founding director of The Museum of Modern Art, as a “puritan.”

Gallery label from

2013.

State variant State III of III, variant
Medium Engraving, with hand additions
Dimensions plate: 16 3/4 x 10 7/8" (42.5 x 27.7 cm); sheet: 25 13/16 × 19 7/8" (65.5 × 50.5 cm)
Publisher unpublished
Printer Gravure, New York, Chestnut Street Press, Providence, RI, Renaissance Press, Ashuelot, NH, R.E. Townsend Studio, Georgetown, MA, Wingate Studio, Hinsdale, NH
Edition 3 known variant impressions of state III, outside the editions
Impression Not numbered
Credit Gift of the artist
Object number 486.1993.4
Department Drawings and Prints

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