LOUISE BOURGEOIS
ONCE THERE WAS A MOTHER
8 September – 23 December 2023
NEW YORK, 18TH STREET
Celebrated for large-scale sculpture and installation art, Bourgeois was also an inventive and prolific printmaker, especially during the last decade of her life. Centered around one of her most powerful themes—motherhood and maternity—the exhibition places Bourgeois’s printed works in relation to sculptures and drawings to highlight the essential role printmaking played within her multifaceted practice.
‘Once there was a mother’ takes its title from Plate 9 of Bourgeois’s 1947 illustrated book ‘He Disappeared into Complete Silence,’ which pairs nine engravings with short texts she called parables. These stories and their accompanying images of isolated buildings convey a sense of loneliness, alienation and lack of communication. They also show Bourgeois’s fascination with the architecture of her adopted city, New York, where she lived and worked from 1938 until her death in 2010. In the parable which accompanies Plate 9, a son ultimately rejects his devoted mother despite her best efforts to protect him. Bourgeois wrote this in the mid-1940s, while raising three young sons.
He Disappeared into Complete Silence (plate 9), 1947–2005, Illustrated book with 11 engravings over photogravure, some with watercolor additions, and letterpress text
Explore the exhibition
Most of the printed works in the exhibition were made during the last decade of Bourgeois’s life, when images of maternity—pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding—came to the fore. Although already in her nineties at the time of their creation, the prints reveal Bourgeois to be exceptionally active and innovative, experimenting with a variety of techniques, adding hand-applied details, and printing on the old garments and household fabric she had saved throughout her long life.
Like pages of a diary, this material evoked memories of people and events from Bourgeois’s past and was also used extensively in her sculptural work as she increasingly identified with her mother, a tapestry weaver and restorer. Her longtime printer, Felix Harlan, established a printing process in which the various fabrics could take as rich an impression as paper. During this period, Bourgeois also began working closely with noted New York publisher and gallerist Carolina Nitsch, who encouraged her interest in making editioned prints with unique elements, including archival dyes, collage and digital processes.
The Fragile
2007
Digital prints on fabric, some with dye additions, suite of 36
Overall: 246.4 x 215.9 x 3.8 cm / 97 x 85 x 1 ½ in
Each frame: 36.8 x 31.8 x 3.8 / 14 ½ x 12 ½ x 1 ½ in
Printmaking afforded Bourgeois the possibility of taking an image or theme and experimenting with it across different variations and permutations. ‘The Fragile’ (2007) is an edition of seven individual sets of thirty-six prints on fabric, each with distinct elements and hand-applied archival dyes. The work is an expression of Bourgeois’s feelings of physical and psychological frailty in her old age, and her ensuing identification with the infant child.
One of the exhibition’s only completely unique printed works is ‘Self Portrait’ (2009). Composed on an old bedspread embroidered with the initials ‘L.B.,’ this work was made a year before the artist’s death and depicts a 24-hour clock with hands positioned at the hours 19 and 11—which together form the year of Bourgeois’s birth. Twenty-four individual drypoint prints are collaged and stitched at every hour, with each print illustrating an important event from the artist’s life. The image at hour 24 resembles ‘Maman,’ the monumental spider Bourgeois saw as a symbol for her mother and as analog for her own artistic practice.
On view at New York, 18th Street
Hauser & Wirth’s West Chelsea location is the gallery’s first dedicated space for Editions. Anchored by the Hauser & Wirth Publishers flagship bookstore, the historic building is also a hub for Learning initiatives, Public Programs and more.
Tuesday 19 Sep, 2023 5:30 pm
In Conversation: Felix Harlan & Maggie Wright on Louise Bourgeois
Printmaker Felix Harlan & Maggie Wright on ‘Louise Bourgeois. Once there was a mother’
On the occasion of the exhibition ‘Louise Bourgeois. Once there was a mother’ at Hauser & Wirth’s newly dedicated Editions space, please join us for a talk about the artist and her printmaking practice with Harlan & Weaver’s Felix Harlan and The Easton Foundation’s Maggie Wright.
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About the Artist
Louise Bourgeois
Current Exhibitions
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