Louise Bourgeois

by Lucy R. Lippard, Robert Storr

Born in Paris in 1911, Louise Bourgeois is one of the great lone wolves of 20th-century art. The work of the sculptress, a resident of New York since 1938, has attracted a steadily growing circle of admirers in the U.S. since the 1970s. The strong interest in her work found its first major expression in the retrospective presented by the New York Museum of Modern Art in 1982. The work itself cannot be appraised from the detached standpoint of cultural evolution or art history, nor is it possible to associate it with any given group of artists (L. Lippard). It is the expression of radical, personal symbolism that at the same time breaks through the boundaries of the personal sphere in its objectification of fundamental feelings and psycho-physical states. This volume contains a series of essays by leading American art historians, who approach her work from a variety of different perspectives. It also includes a complete bibliography on Louise Bourgeois and her work.

Genres: Art

196 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 1995

About the author

Since 1966, Lippard has published 20 books on feminism, art, politics and place and has received numerous awards and accolades from literary critics and art associations. A 2012 exhibition on her seminal book, Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object at the Brooklyn Museum, titled "Six Years": Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art", cites Lippard's scholarship as its point of entry into a discussion about conceptual art during its era of emergence, demonstrating her crucial role in the contemporary understanding of this period of art production and criticism. Her research on the move toward dematerialization in art making has formed a cornerstone of contemporary art scholarship and discourse.

Co-founder of Printed matter (an art bookstore in New York City centered around artist's books), the Heresies Collective, Political Art Documentation/Distribution (PAD/D), Artists Call Against U.S. Intervention in Central America, and other artists' organizations, she has also curated over 50 exhibitions, done performances, comics, guerrilla theater, and edited several independent publications the latest of which is the decidedly local La Puente de Galisteo in her home community in Galisteo, New Mexico. She has infused aesthetics with politics, and disdained disinterestedness for ethical activism.

Reviews

[Lena · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOVE