Mud Lane

Cat. No. 1059

Mud Lane

State/Variant:
Only state
Date:
c. 1989
Themes
Architecture
Techniques
Drypoint
Support:
Smooth, wove paper
Dimensions:
plate: 6 7/8 x 4 15/16" (17.4 x 12.5 cm); sheet: 19 5/16 x 14" (49 x 35.5 cm)
Signature:
Not signed
Publisher
unpublished
Printer
Harlan & Weaver
Edition:
1 known impression of the only state
Edition Information:
Not issued as a published edition.
Impression:
Not numbered
Background:
Without intending to make a printed image, Bourgeois used a copper plate that was handy on her desk to scratch out this diagram as she was describing her Staten Island house to a visitor. She asked to have an impression pulled at a later date, simply because the plate was with some others being printed at the time.
Former Cat. No.:
W & S B16
Description:
Drypoint
Inscription:
"Mud Lane" upper right composition [in plate].
Artist’s Remarks:
This image, according to Bourgeois, "has to do with one way to approach a problem... by putting it down on a map or a grid to analyze it. It is a comforting feeling to get a grip on a subject. This is my house and plot on Staten Island."

(Bourgeois had worked for years on a house she owned there, as if it were a sculpture, not intending to live in it.) "This was a plan I had. It was a wish, but then a disappointment. Yet the possibility of a solution, by plotting it out, is better than nothing." Bourgeois explained: "The house is filled with back doors and an entrance. The problem is to try to reach the back road... to find another way to get out." Comparing it to her nest-like, labyrinthine sculptures of the 1960s, she said, "This is the beginning of a lair." (Quote cited in Wye, Deborah and Carol Smith. “The Prints of Louise Bourgeois.” New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1994, p. 243.)
MoMA Credit Line:
Gift of the artist
MoMA Accession Number:
524.1993
© The Easton Foundation/VAGA at ARS, NY

Mud Lane

c. 1989

States
Mud Lane

Related Works in the Catalogue

Mud Slide

Related Works in Other Mediums

Articulated Lair
Lair
Untitled