3. EN/DE
The Reticent Child
Louise Bourgeois

The Reticent Child

, 2005
  • Material
    Offsetlithografie, mit „LB“ (für Louise Bourgeois) monogrammiert und nummeriert
  • Edition Size
    300
  • Measurement
    15 x 9,5 cm
    Zu dieser signierten Grafik gehört das Buch „Recueil des Secrets de Louise Bourgeois (1635)“, 240 Seiten, farbiger Umschlag von Louise Bourgeois, Ex-Libris #8
  • Details about the frame
    Edler handgefertiger Distanzrahmen aus Nußbaumholz, gewachst, mit entspiegeltem Museumsglas, Außenmaße des Rahmens: ca. 16 cm x 21 cm, die Lithografie ist leicht erhöht montiert, damit das Blatt schön zur Geltung kommt; inkl. rückseitiger Aufhängung
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About the edition

With this art book by Louise Bourgeois, artflash has achieved the impossible and discovered an edition that had originally been out of stock. The work, which consists of a book and a single offset lithography, had been published in 2005 and has been unavailable since 2011. After a lot of research artflash managed to discover 20 copies at the original publisher, the Salon Verlag Cologne. When Louise Bourgeois approached the idea of this limited-book edition, she decided to use the first publication that addressed gynaecology and paediatrics, written by a midwife. „Recueil des Secrets de Louise Bourgeois“, was originally published in 1635 and displays a curious coincidence: both, the author and the American-French artist share the same name. For her limited-book edition, Bourgeois designed the cover as well as this small ex-libris edition entitled “The Reticent Child”. The hand signed lithography shows the naked torso of a pregnant woman. Similar to medical depictions the body is cut open to show the foetus. But rather than being a detailed drawn illustration that serves to point out the anatomical correctness, this work is more of an aquarelle with the features of a painting. A few and carefully chosen nuances of colour vary between rose and red and create a powerful corporeality. With this art-book, Loiuse Bourgeois reminds us of the strong bound between mother and child and the great power that lies within this relationship.

About the artist

It is no exaggeration to call Louise Bourgeois the grand dame of contemporary art. The artist who died in 2010 with 98 years of age was exhibited in the biggest museums worldwide and in 1982 the Museum of Modern Art in New York even dedicated a solo-exhibition to her - it was the first time in the museum’s history that this honour was shown to a woman. Despite that Bourgeois is also known as on of the most expensive artists worldwide and her sculptures, installations of bronze, marble, plaster and latex are achieving the highest offers. Nevertheless this honouring is not necessarily in Bourgeois personal interest. The emancipated artist, who was born in France but lived in New York since 1938, always rebelled against the conventional and against what was supposed to be suited for a lady. Even when she was in her later years Bourgeois still organized her legendary salons in her studio in Chelsea and looked for the exchange with young artists She remained a person of inquiry, who used her autobiographical inspired art to address feelings of anxiousness, hatred, madness and most of all her traumatizing childhood memories. Bourgeois had an extreme drive to keep on creating and made her last drawing one week before she died. Being a great inspiration to other people she was also the one woman that was portrait by Robert Mapplethorpe, with a smirk on her face, wearing a fur coat and carrying an oversized phallus in her arm. And this way we should remember Louise Bourgeois: as a woman of great humour, who taught us that pain and death are a part of life and that asking questions should never end.

Latest Exhibitions (Selection)

2017, Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait, MOMA New York
2016, Louise Bourgeois: Structures of Existence: The Cells, Guggenheim Bilbao, Spanien
2015, Louise Bourgeois: I have been to Hell an Back, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Schweden
2011 Fondation Beyeler, Riehen
2007/2008, Retrospektive Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
2007/08, Retrospektive Tate Modern, London
2003, Louisiana Museum of Art, Dänemark
2002, Documenta 11, Kassel
2001, Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao
2000, Tate Modern, London, Eröffnungsausstellung der Turbinen-Halle
1996, Deichtorhallen Hamburg
1995, Biennale von Venedig
1993, Biennale von Venedig
1992, documenta 9, Kassel
1983, Museum of Modern Art, New York
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Links of Interest (Selection)

Artikel im New Yorker anlässlich der Ausstellung "Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait" im MOMA, New York, 2017
Artikel in der New York Times anlässlich der Ausstellung im Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2008Über Louise Bourgeois´ Ausstellung im Kunsthaus Bregenz in der FAZ, 2002Louise Bourgeois bei Hauser & Wirth, New York

Deutsch version