Louise Bourgeois's beguiling body of work encompasses spiders, cages, architectural sculptures, fragile human figures, and amorphous erotic forms. Strongly influenced by surrealism, abstract expressionism, and minimalism, she remains among the most prominent female contemporary artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. An overview of Bourgeois's career, this book begins with a series of essays before delving into encyclopedic entries on the themes and concepts most essential to the artist's practice. A glossary of terms ranging from "etching" and "existentialism" to "Mapplethorpe" and "maternity" contains excerpts from interviews, diary entries, texts, and more than 300 illustrations to provide the reader with multiple points of entry into Bourgeois's complex and nonlinear world. The tenth-anniversary reissue makes this peerless resource available to all touched by Bourgeois's influential practice.
Her staggering variety of mediums includes rubber, wood, stone, metal, and fabric. In 1993, she represented the United States at the Venice Biennale. An overview of Bourgeois's career, this book covers individual works, art movements, other artists, and themes that have played an important role in her life and art, with text by acclaimed authors and critics, including Julia Kristeva, Elisabeth Lebovici, Frances Morris, Mignon Nixon, Linda Nochlin, Robert Storr, Alex Potts, Marina Warner, and Deborah Wye