Louise Bourgeois: The Fabric Works

This elegantly produced and extensive catalogue includes more than 300 sculptures, assemblages, and collages by artist Louise Bourgeois (1911%E2%80%932010), the majority created after 2002 and accompanying the 2010 Fabric Works exhibition in Venice. "It is not an image that I am seeking," Bourgeois said. "It's not an idea. It is an emotion you want to recreate, an emotion of wanting, of giving, and of destroying." In the 1990s, Bourgeois started using her own and others' clothing to refashion the diverse range of emotions embodied in her sculpture. Photographs of Bourgeois's work are interspersed with her diary entries, poems, and interview excerpts, often provocative ("How much violence is there in you today... how can I possibly find out?") and revealing ("I blame someone when I am upset or when I have failed..."). Art critic Celant's intellectually rigorous and graceful essay prefaces the collection and persuasively contextualizes her fabric works as an autobiographical visual diary connected to Russian Suprematism, Italian Futurism, and the German Bauhaus. A brief but revealing essay by Bourgeois follows, describing her family's deep connection to tapestry making: her mother's roots in Aubusson and her family's renowned tapestry gallery in Paris. This exceptional collection reveals how weaving, fabric, and pattern were literally and metaphorically intrinsic to Bourgeois's recreation of emotion in her art. (June)