LOUISE BOURGEOIS: COMPLETE BOOKS & PRINTS

Alternate Title:

La Maladie de l'Amour (Disease of Love)

Themes:

Abstraction, Body Parts, Nature

Techniques:

Etching

Description:

panel (a): Pencil
panel (b): Soft ground etching, with hand additions
panel (c): Pencil

Support:

Paper

Dimensions:

plate: 60 1/4 × 15 13/16" (153 × 40.2 cm) (dimensions reflect full plate size; this is a partial print); sheet (approx.): 59 1/2 × 54" (151.1 × 137.2 cm)

Signature:

panel (b): "LB" lower right comp., pencil.

Inscription:

panel (a): "The attraction / to / the / rejected" center sheet, pencil, artist's hand.
panel (c): "the / age / of / innocence" center sheet, pencil, artist's hand.

Publisher:

Osiris, New York

Printer:

Wingate Studio, Hinsdale, NH

Edition:

Unique

Impression:

Not numbered

Edition Information:

This is one of 6 unique variants outside the edition to incorporate this plate, printed alone or in combination with other plates in multi-panel works. When the plate is used alone, the work is included in the Evolving Composition Diagram. When it is printed with other plates, it is included in Related Works in the Catalogue.

See Evolving Composition Diagram:
Untitled, no. 3 of 5, from the series, "The Vocabulary of Seduction"
"La Maladie de l'Amour"
"La Maladie de l'Amour (#2)"
"La Maladie de l'Amour (#3)"

See Related Works in the Catalogue:
Untitled, no. 2 of 5, from the series, "The Vocabulary of Seduction"
Untitled, no. 3 of 4, from the series, "What Why When Where Who and How!!"

About the “La Maladie de l’Amour” edition:
This edition is irregular in that "1/3" consists of a single impression, while “2/3” and “3/3” are diptychs. Selective wiping varies significantly throughout the edition. There is 1 known variant impression of the only state, outside the edition.

Background:

Benjamin Shiff, the director of the Osiris imprint, collaborated with Bourgeois in a highly experimental phase of printmaking that occupied the last years of her life, from 2005 to 2010. He first established a working relationship with the artist in the 1990s, but the late period is particularly noteworthy for the innovative and complex large-scale projects that evolved at that time. Shiff made use of professional workshops for printing, but he oversaw the creation of the printing plates as Bourgeois worked on them in her home studio. He also provided assistance as she added extensive hand additions and texts, and as she combined individual compositions into multi-panel works and illustrated books.

Installation Remarks:

This composition is one of 5 that constitute a single work of art. All of these compositions are to be exhibited together in the indicated sequence.

Curatorial Remarks:

The hand additions and paper type could not be documented because this work is not in MoMA's Collection and could not be examined in person. The plate dimensions are from an impression in MoMA's Collection. The overall mediums and sheet dimensions for the series were provided by the Louise Bourgeois Studio.

© The Easton Foundation/VAGA at ARS, NY