
NOT IN MoMA'S COLLECTION
Cat. No. 1107/I
Le Grand Regard Greeting
- State/Variant:
- State I of II
- Date:
- 1948
- 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- unpublished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