Untitled, no. 50 of 69, from the illustrated book, Album

Cat. No. 895

Untitled, no. 50 of 69, from the illustrated book, Album

State/Variant:
Only state
Date:
1994
Illustrated Book:
Album
Themes
Faces & Portaits, Figures, Nature
Techniques
Lithography, Other Techniques
Support:
Smooth paper, with vellum overlay
Dimensions:
vellum overlay: 8 1/4 × 5" (21 × 12.7 cm); page: 8 1/4 × 10 1/2" (21 × 26.6 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.
Description:
Photolithograph
Pagination:
Page 53 of 76.
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:
196.1997.50
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

Untitled, no. 50 of 69, from the illustrated book, Album

1994

States
Untitled, no. 50 of 69, from the illustrated book, Album

Illustrated Book

1994

Album

Related Works in the Catalogue

Child Abuse: A Project by Louise Bourgeois for Artforum
The Trauma of Abandonment

Related Works in Other Mediums

Seamstress Mistress Distress Stress
Seamstress Mistress Distress Stress
Publication Excerpts

Louise Bourgeois,

Album,

New York, Peter Blum Edition, 1994

No. 50 of 69
And she slept with my father. The thing
about Sadie is that she lived in the house.
And she stayed for 10 years — the
formative years of my sister and myself.
The story of Sadie is to me almost as
important as the story of my mother in my
life. The motivation for the work is a
negative reaction against her.