LOUISE BOURGEOIS: COMPLETE BOOKS & PRINTS

Alternate Title:

Winged Head

Themes:

Abstraction, Faces & Portraits

Techniques:

Etching

Description:

Soft ground etching

Support:

Paper

Dimensions:

plate: 6 3/4 × 9" (17.1 × 22.9 cm)

Signature:

"L. Bourgeois" lower right margin, pencil.

Inscription:

Verso: "25 [circled] / le grand regard greeting / 7 x 9" center right sheet, pencil, artist's hand.

Publisher:

unpublished

Printer:

The artist

Edition:

1 known impression of state I

Impression:

Not numbered

Edition Information:

Not issued as a published edition at any state.

Background:

David Porter, who commissioned this greeting card, came to know the artist when he worked at Public Works News in New York. He had a Bourgeois lithograph hanging in his office (according to an undated letter in MoMA Collection records). As a dealer in Washington, D.C., he organized the 1945 exhibition "Personal Statement: Painting Prophecy 1950," which included "Natural History #2," seen in Related Works in Other Mediums below. (To read the artist's statement from the exhibition catalogue, see Marie-Laure Bernadac and Hans-Ulrich Obrist's "Destruction of the Father/Reconstruction of the Father: Writings and Interviews, 1923-1997." London: Violette, 1998, p. 44.) Bourgeois did not know whether, as planned, Porter actually had greeting cards made using her design.

Curatorial Remarks:

The paper type and sheet size could not be documented because this work is not in MoMA's Collection and could not be examined in person.

© The Easton Foundation/VAGA at ARS, NY