LOUISE BOURGEOIS: COMPLETE BOOKS & PRINTS

Author:

Arthur Miller

Themes:

Nature

Techniques:

Drypoint

Description:

Drypoint

Support:

Smooth, wove paper

Dimensions:

plate: 7 5/16 x 5 3/8" (18.6 x 13.6 cm); page: 11 1/2 x 8 3/4" (29.2 x 22.2 cm)

Signature:

"Louise Bourgeois" center colophon (vol. I), blue ink.

Publisher:

Peter Blum Edition, New York

Printer:

Harlan & Weaver, New York

Edition:

100; plus 1 H.C. (numbered I/I) and a trade edition of 1200, plus a portfolio edition of 44

Impression:

"I/I" center colophon (vol. I), black ink, unknown hand.

Edition Information:

The sources for the illustrations in volume I of “Homely Girl” are drawings Bourgeois executed in 1991 in ballpoint pen. She reinterpreted these drawings in drypoint for the special edition, emphasizing the scratched quality of line that can be achieved with this technique. For the trade edition, she used photolithography to reproduce them. The sources for the illustrations in volume II are ophthalmological photographs of diseased eyes. Bourgeois reproduced them through photolithography.

The Arthur Miller text in volume I is repeated in volume II, but in volume II Bourgeois highlighted (in red) select passages referring to sight. The highlighted text appears in both the special edition and the trade edition of volume II.

The special edition of “Homely Girl” is quarter-bound in leather; the trade edition is entirely cloth bound. The trade edition is in MoMA’s Collection (Accession Numbers: 29.1993.A.x2 and 29.1993.B.x2) but it is not illustrated here.

The portfolio edition of “Homely Girl” includes the drypoint compositions from volume I; the compositions in volume II were not produced in a portfolio format.

Printer of Text:

The Stinehour Press, Lunenberg, VT

Background:

As explained in his published postscript to "Homely Girl, a Life," Peter Blum expressed to Bourgeois his wish to do a book at the time of their collaboration on the 1990 "Anatomy" portfolio (see Related Works in the Catalogue). For a long time, he had also been interested in publishing a book by American playwright Arthur Miller. While looking with Bourgeois at the book "Portraits," a collection of photographs by Miller's wife Inge Morath, which included a portrait of Bourgeois, Blum had the idea of bringing author and artist together. The publisher proposed a collaborative project, which appealed to both.

Miller visited Bourgeois's sculpture-filled Brooklyn studio and saw there, among many other works, several pieces in her series Cells, which concerns the senses of sight, hearing, and smell. Miller selected for the project an unpublished text whose subject is a romance between a girl and a blind man.

Artist’s Remarks:

"We still have two entities, but one has flourished and the other has diminished." (Quote cited in Wye, Deborah and Carol Smith. “The Prints of Louise Bourgeois.” New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1994, p. 217.)

Former Cat. No.:

W & S 129

MoMA Credit Line:

Gift of the artist

MoMA Accession Number:

29.1993.A04.x1

This Work in Other Collections:

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN
Baltimore Museum of Art, MD

© The Easton Foundation/VAGA at ARS, NY