LOUISE BOURGEOIS: COMPLETE BOOKS & PRINTS

Themes:

Abstraction, Fabric Works

Techniques:

Other

Description:

Fabric collage

Dimensions:

page (approx.): 10 3/4 × 12 1/16" (27.3 × 30.7 cm)

Signature:

"Louise Bourgeois" printed lower middle, inside back book cover, red lithograph.

Edition:

Unique

Impression:

Not numbered

Edition Information:

There is an editioned version of this unique fabric illustrated book. It was published in 2004 in an edition of 25 plus 7 A.P., 6 P.P.

Pagination:

68 unnumbered pages.

Background:

"Ode à l'Oubli" was Bourgeois's first book of fabric collages, and it is unique. The pages were made of linen hand towels from the artist’s wedding trousseau. These towels are embroidered with the monogram “LBG” for “Louise Bourgeois Goldwater.” (Bourgeois married the American art historian Robert Goldwater in 1938.) To assemble the book, Bourgeois worked with Mercedes Katz, a seamstress she had employed starting in 1999. The fabric collages on each page are made from fragments of her old clothing and household items. SOLO Impression printed the lithographed cover and the two text pages within the volume. In 2004, Bourgeois issued an editioned version of "Ode à l'Oubli," published by Peter Blum Edition.

Bibliography:

Wye, Deborah. "Louise Bourgeois (American, born France 1911)." In Cornelia Butler and Alexandra Schwartz, eds., "Modern Women: Women Artists at The Museum of Modern Art." New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2010, 274-277.

This article describes Bourgeois's relationship to fabric as a material for artworks, and the making of "Ode à l'Oubli."

MoMA Credit Line:

Gift of the artist

MoMA Accession Number:

540.2005.30

This Work in Other Collections:

Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, Gainesville
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT

© The Easton Foundation/VAGA at ARS, NY