She Lost It (1)

Cat. No. 54

She Lost It (1)

State/Variant:
Only version
Date:
1992
Themes
Fabric Works, Words
Techniques
Screenprint
Support:
Fabric (cheesecloth)
Dimensions:
Sheet: 34 5/16" × 178' 4" (87.2 × 5435.6 cm)
Signature:
Not signed
Publisher
The Fabric Workshop and Museum
Printer
The Fabric Workshop and Museum
Edition:
3
Edition Information:
Varying from this example, two in the edition are printed on cotton voile and are shorter in height (19" x 178' 4").
Impression:
Not numbered
Background:
In 1992, The Fabric Workshop in Philadelphia, an organization devoted to experimental fabric design and printing by artists, commissioned Bourgeois and other artists to make scarves. For her design, Bourgeois chose a four-sentence parable that she found in her daybook for 1947. (She kept daybooks for each year up until the very last years of her life, using them for appointments and also annotating them with short texts and drawings.) The text for “She Lost It” was written at about the same time as the parables she wrote for her well-known illustrated book, “He Disappeared into Complete Silence.”

Ultimately, the text “She Lost It” was used not only for modestly-scaled silk scarves, available in four colors, but also for this immense 178-foot banner/bandage version (Cat. No. 54), printed in an edition of 3 (one on cotton cheesecloth and two on cotton voile.)

This cotton cheesecloth example was used in a performance directed by the artist and held on December 5, 1992, at The Fabric Workshop on the occasion of its Fifteenth Anniversary Benefit. The Benefit event honored the artist and Anne d’Harnoncourt, then director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Performers in this event were dressed in white costumes adorned with phrases written by Bourgeois and embroidered in red. One performer, Robert Storr (the curator, critic, artist, and authority on Bourgeois's work), was completely wrapped in the immense 178-foot banner/bandage, his identity hidden. He was slowly unwrapped by other performers who used the unwrapped portion to slowly wrap an embracing man and woman. During this unwrapping and wrapping, the printed text of “She Lost It” was visible to the audience as an unfolding narrative.

The performance, which incorporated music, began with a magician’s act, followed by a slide screening of the engraved plates of “He Disappeared into Complete Silence,” and a reading of their accompanying parables. The performance was also seen in conjunction with a separate installation of a cotton voile example of the banner/bandage on a specially-built spiraling wall that formed a tunnel; viewers walked through while reading the printed text.
Former Cat. No.:
W & S 144
Description:
Screenprint
Artist’s Remarks:
Discussing the performance staged with "She Lost It," Bourgeois said: "A performance is a realization of a lot of things and it incorporates lots of people... everybody enjoys it. This is Louise as a teacher... but I can choose my collaborators, while I'm not usually able to choose my students."

"Wrapping is about wounds. I was always falling as a child. People called me "iodine Louise" because I always had bandages wrapped around my knees. My sister had a stiff leg and had to have a plaster cast around her knee... some bandaging went under that cast. But a bandage can be friendly because it is comforting. One can be 'wrapped up in work'... or a baby can be swaddled... both are very positive. The swaddling also attracts me because it is a kind of spiral... it can be a bondage, but it should not be seen as a constricting element... it is a loving one."

Referring to her parable printed on the banner, Bourgeois said: "The story of the pea is a story of abandonment... she is a passive person... she is dying. In the bandaging, I can take care of people... I am the active one."

Referring to tapestries, which, as a child assisting in the family business, she helped repair, she said: "These subjects of couples were always in the tapestries, with stories of the gods, so we learned them well. There was one about Penelope, a weaver. She wove while her husband was away during the day. She undid it at night. She saw to it that the weaving would never be finished... she would never stop waiting for him." (Quotes cited in Wye, Deborah and Carol Smith. "The Prints of Louise Bourgeois." New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1994, p. 222.)
MoMA Credit Line:
Gift of the artist
MoMA Accession Number:
3.1993
© The Easton Foundation/VAGA at ARS, NY

She Lost It

1992

Formats
She Lost It (1)
She Lost It (2)
She Lost It (2)
She Lost It (2)
She Lost It (2)
She Lost It (2)

Related Works in Other Mediums

She Lost It, a performance by Louise Bourgeois in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on December 5, 1992
Garment from the performance, She Lost It
Garment from the performance, She Lost It
Publication Excerpts

Louise Bourgeois,

She Lost It,

1947

A man and a woman lived together. On one evening he did not come back from work, and she waited. She kept on waiting and she grew littler and littler. Later, a neighbor stopped by out of friendship and there he found her, in the armchair, the size of a pea.