Destruction of the Father / Reconstruction of the Father: Writings and Interviews, 1923-1997
edited by Marie-Laure Bernadac and Hans-Ulrich Obrist"Everyday you have to abandon your past or accept it and then if youcannot accept it, you become a sculptor."Since the age of twelve, the internationally renowned sculptor LouiseBourgeois has been writing and drawing ;first a diary preciselyrecounting the everyday events of her family life, then notes andreflections.\ Destruction of the Father ;the title comes fromthe name of a sculpture she did following the death of her husband in1973...
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Destruction of the Father—the title comes fromthe name of a sculpture she did following the death of her husband in1973—contains both formal texts and what the artist calls"pen-thoughts": drawing-texts often connected to her drawings andsculptures, with stories or poems inscribed alongside the images.Alice QuinnBourgeois is exceedingly intelligent and droll . . . what she writes is thoroughly moving. -- Artforum
\ Alice QuinnBourgeois is exceedingly intelligent and droll . . . what she writes is thoroughly moving. -- Artforum\ \ \ \ \ Library JournalThis collection of writings and statements by sculptor Bourgeois includes letters, journal entries, poetry, and interviews with the artist spanning the entire period from her student days to just last year. The impression created is one of lifelong preoccupation with a set of personal concerns that, as curator Bernadac says in the introduction, reflect "the fundamental dichotomy between professional control and spontaneity, between the conscious and the unconscious, between the expression that is structured, assembled, and thought through, and the expression that is presented raw, as the product of an urgent impulse." Readers not already familiar with Bourgeois's work will appreciate the small photographs of sculptures, drawings, and prints included. Recommended for scholarly and specialized collections.--Kathryn Wekselman, Univ. of Cincinnati Lib.\ \
