Louise Bourgeois. The Return of the Repressed. Vol 1

Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010) invented a new kind of language for sculpture — a language that was essentially psychoanalytic, uniquely capable of expressing oedipal struggle, ominous forces of repression, sexual symbolism and material uncanniness. Famed for some of the twentieth century’s most enduring works, such as “The Destruction of the Father” (1974), “Arch of Hysteria” (1993) and “Maman” (1999), Bourgeois also disseminated her influence through her writings, collected in the 1998 volume “Destruction of the Father/Reconstruction of the Father: Writings 1927–1997” — originally published by Robert Violette, also the publisher of this new deluxe two-volume set. The first volume highlights the enduring presence of psychoanalysis as a motivational force and a site of exploration in the artist’s life and work. Selected and edited by Philip Larratt-Smith (Bourgeois’ literary archivist), and contextualized with eight extensive scholarly essays, this collection of approximately 80 previously unpublished writings spans some six decades of the artist’s production. The second volume in this gorgeous slipcased set is an impressive, up-to-date Bourgeois monograph that details works made right up until the artist’s death in 2010. Together, the two volumes comprise the most complete portrait of the life, work and thought of this seminal figure.