
NOT IN MoMA'S COLLECTION
Cat. No. 1116
Acrobat
- State/Variant:
- Only state
- Date:
- 2005
- Themes:
- Figures
- Techniques:
- Etching
- Description:
- Soft ground etching, watercolor, pencil, and colored pencil additions
- Support:
- Paper
- Dimensions:
- plate (in 3 parts) (overall): 37 3/8 × 11 9/16" (94.9 × 29.4 cm); sheet: 43 1/2 × 16" (110.5 × 40.6 cm)
- Signature:
- "Louise Bourgeois" lower right margin, pencil.
- Publisher:
- Osiris, New York
- Printer:
- Chestnut Street Press, Providence, RI
- Edition:
- 7
- Impression:
- "6/7" lower left margin, pencil, unknown hand.
- Edition Information:
- This composition is comprised of 3 plates stacked on top of each other. For the illustrated book "Hang On," only 2 plates are used. For the edition "Acrobat," all 3 plates are used.
About the "Acrobat" edition:
The hand additions vary slightly across the edition. Of the 3 plates used in this composition, soft ground etching is only in the middle and lower thirds. The top third is a lightly distressed plate with crayon additions that extend the length of the two ropes. For comparison, see various impressions in the Evolving Composition Diagram below. In this edition, Bourgeois and the publisher designated each impression as a study. (Usually in this catalogue, the term study describes photocopies and tracings that were used in the process of developing a composition.)
About the "Hang On" illustrated book edition:
Of the announced edition of 9 unbound and 12 bound, only 9 unbound examples were realized.
There are varying hand additions across the edition of illustrated books. Impression number 5/9 was also available for examination by MoMA cataloguers, but was not available for reproduction. In that example, plate 6 has blue watercolor wash, pencil, and red crayon additions. - Curatorial Remarks:
- The hand additions and paper type could not be fully documented because this work is not in MoMA's Collection and could not be examined in person. The plate dimensions are from the impression in MoMA's Collection. The sheet dimensions were provided by the Louise Bourgeois Studio.
© The Easton Foundation/VAGA at ARS, NY