What a great book!
In the foreword by Daniel Birnbaum, director Moderna Museet; Ann-Sofi Noring, co-director Moderna Museet; and José Lebrero Stals, director Museo Picasso, Málaga, the title of book and exposition is explained as the quote from a textile work, a handkerchief that the artist embroidered at the age of eighty-five and which serves very well as a summary of her remarkable life and oeuvre.
 
With some hundred works ? sculptures, installations, paintings, works on paper and textiles ? this well-made book gives a splendid insight in this (indeed) embracing presentation of Louise Bourgeois ever in the Nordic region.
As one of the most important artists of the twentieth and twenty-first century the exposition is laid out in themes, well laid out with the help of Jerry Gorovoy, the artist’s assistant over many decades and her close friend.
 
In the following well-written chapters the development of Bourgeois, her abandoning her family in France and arrival in New York, the evolvement of themes and images are well illustrated with works. The human condition in skyscraper forms, like the ‘Personages’ sculptures, textile forms piled up and human figures, the glass filled cupboard, and a pink rubber wall relief also exhibit in the text the emotional meanings where ? for that time ? peculiar non-sculpture but touching materials are used. With full-page photos the works described get under the reader’s skin showing all the power of her works, individually as well as confronted with each other.
 
Even in one of the last chapters Balance where Bourgeois looked for overcoming extremes of emotion and the attempt to achieve a state of balance and harmony, the power and electricity scatters from the pages, making you curious to turn the pages to find more treasures. In Louise Bourgeois: Woman of Her Words, Léa Vuong describes the use of words that appear in an array of textures and shapes, produced using materials and techniques displaying her wide range of skills. The pages Photo Album show Bourgeois from a young age, growing up, family and at work, and the last chapter her in conversation with Christiane Meyer closes the circle spun by this book. Bourgeois is here explaining, among other things, the gift given to the artist.
The book closes with the chapter Letters and a vast biography, a book list and photo captions. What does one want more if even the choice of printing paper breathes Bourgeois’ materiality?
 
This exposition, these works and this book I consider as Bourgeois’ final gift to us.
Closing the book, the back side cover pages say on the handkerchief “I HAVE BEEN TO HELL AND BACK. AND LET ME TELL YOU, IT WAS WONDERFUL”.
Angela van der Burght
 
Read the Agenda on the exposition Moderna Museet 14/2/2015-17/5/2015>