Museum of Modern Art

Album

Cat. No. 846-914

Album

Date:: 1994

Themes: Animals & Insects, Architecture, Faces & Portaits, Figures, Motherhood & Family, Nature, Objects
Techniques: Lithography, Other Techniques
Support:: Paper
Dimensions:: page (each): 8 1/4 x 10 1/2" (21 x 26.7 cm); overall: 8 7/16 x 12 x 7/8" (21.5 x 30.5 x 2.3 cm)
Signature:: Not signed
Publisher: Peter Blum Edition
Printer: Albani drukkers
Edition:: 850
Impression:: Not numbered
Background:: This 1994 autobiographical work, titled “Album,” is comprised of old family photographs along with texts by the artist. It is based on a slideshow-format film Bourgeois created in 1983 titled “Partial Recall.” This film was presented in the lobby of The Museum of Modern Art, New York in conjunction with the artist’s 1982–1983 retrospective there. Many of the images in that film appear in “Album,” and much of the book's text comes from the film's voice-over narration by the artist.

“Album” documents aspects of Bourgeois’s early life. The artist, born in 1911, had two siblings: an older sister called Henriette, and a younger brother, Pierre. Until she was six years old, the family lived in Choisy-le-Roi, France in a large home that accommodated the family’s tapestry restoration business, near the River Seine. When World War I broke out, her father enlisted. His wife visited him at various encampments with the young Louise in tow. After the war, the family moved to Antony on the banks of the Bièvre River. They chose their homes with proximity to rivers since the water was important to the process of tapestry restoration. In the early twenties, an English tutor named Sadie Gordon Richmond was hired for the children, but also became the father’s mistress. She stayed in the house for ten years, causing Bourgeois great distress and memories that lasted a lifetime.

At the time the film, "Partial Recall," was made, Bourgeois was also asked to create a page project for Artforum magazine (December 1982) and she based it on some of the same photographs and narration. The Artforum piece, titled “Child Abuse: A Project by Louise Bourgeois” is seen below in Related Works in the Catalogue.

Much later, in 2001, Bourgeois again used some of these photographic images for the fabric illustrated book, “The Trauma of Abandonment,” seen below in Related Work in the Catalogue.
Curatorial Remarks:: According to the colophon, "Album" was typeset in the font, Nicolas Cochin, by Hexxen grafisch werk, and Klaus Baumgärtner was the book designer. (See alternate view #6, below the main image on this page.)

See alternate view #5 for the Publisher's note.
Description:: Illustrated book with 69 photolithographs
Pagination:: 76 unnumbered pages: blank page, half-title page, title page, text page (no. 1 of 69), 67 plates (nos. 2–68 of 69), text page (no. 69 of 69), blank page, Publisher's note, colophon, blank page
Housing:: Cloth-covered hard binding, with brass binding screws. "LB" center cover and "Louise Bourgeois" center spine, embossed in black.
MoMA Credit Line:: Gift of the artist
MoMA Accession Number:: 196.1997.1-69
This Work in Other Collections:: American Art and Portrait Gallery Library, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
The Baltimore Museum of Art, MD
Brooklyn Museum, NY
Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles
Harvard University, Fine Arts Library, Cambridge, MA
Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis

© The Easton Foundation/VAGA at ARS, NY

From the illustrated book

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Related Works in the Catalogue

Autobiographical Series

Self Portrait

Child Abuse: A Project by Louise Bourgeois for Artforum

My Wounded Father

Point d'Ironie

The Trauma of Abandonment