Louise Bourgeois

Elisabeth Bronfen

Marie-Laure Bernadac

The Insomnia Drawings

Joseph Kosuth

John C. Welchman

Jacinto Lageira

Joseph Kosuth is a prominent conceptual artist who draws his inspiration from hsitory and its stratifications as well as philosophy and literature. In this exhibition Kosuth has developed his work on neon sentences; visitors proceed through the Louvre reading the sentences and reflecting on the process of the vision and considering what it means. The texts are written by the artist himself, which breaks from his usual practice of borrowing them from literature and philosophy.

'ni apparence ni illusion'

Pablo Picasso

Brigitte Léal

Christine Piot

Pablo Picasso was one of the most innovative, experimental, prolific, influential, and controversial painters of the twentieth century. An updated and re-designed version of the large-format book published in the year 2000, this small-format Picasso. The Monograph 1881-1973 offers more than 1,200 new-scanned reproductions spanning the artist’s entire career. The three authors are all experts: Léal and Bernadac both former curators of the Musée Picasso in Paris are, at this time and respectively, curators of the Centre Pompidou and the Louvre Museum, and Piot coauthored the catalogue raisonné of Picasso’s sculpture. Brigitte Leal covers Picasso's formative years from 1881 through 1916, including his invention of Cubism with Georges Braque. Christine Piot explores the astonishingly fertile period from 1917 through 1952, and Marie- Laure Bernadac discusses the unabashed vigor of Picasso’s later years, from 1953 until his death in 1973. Smoothly translated from the French, the book weaves biographical details and discussions of the art into a concise narrative. (“Olga became pregnant in the summer of 1920, and in Picasso’s work forms blossomed and flesh took on the massive quality of stone.”).The authors keep an extremely tight focus on their subject, with only as much mention of Picasso’s contemporaries or the outside world as absolutely necessary. The 16-page section on Guernica, for example, has barely two pages of discussion about the painting and its genesis. In short, for any personal or academic art history collection, and for students or community libraries, Picasso. The Monograph 1881-1973 is unsurpassed.

The Monograph, 1881-1973

Picasso

Louise Bourgeois est par excellence la femme-couteau, la femme sculpteur, celle qui découpe, tranche, cisaille, mais aussi celle qui incarne l’ambivalence féminin-masculin : la protection et la menace, la fragilité et la force, la tendresse et la violence. Née en 1911 à Paris, et ayant vécu à New York de 1938 jusqu’à sa mort en 2010, elle est devenue, après une reconnaissance tardive, l’une des artistes les plus emblématiques du XXe siècle. Son œuvre polymorphe, composée de peintures, gravures, dessins, sculptures, installations, est profondément autobiographique et échappe à toute classification esthétique. En réactivant les souvenirs et les traumatismes de son enfance, Louise Bourgeois donne forme et corps à ses émotions, créant une œuvre organique, sensuelle et érotique, dont le thème essentiel est la femme-maison. « La sculpture est le corps et mon corps est une sculpture. » Cette biographie ne retrace pas seulement le parcours d’une grande artiste, sa formation, ses influences ; c’est aussi le récit d’une vie de femme exceptionnelle, ayant connu les deux guerres, l’exil, épouse d’un célèbre historien de l’art, et mère de trois enfants. Elle s’appuie sur les archives personnelles inédites de l’artiste, ses journaux intimes, sa correspondance, ses écrits psychanalytiques, ainsi que sur ses interviews et des entretiens avec ses proches.

Paulo Herkenhoff

Catalog of an exhibition held at Tate Modern, London and four other institutions between Oct. 10, 2007 and June 7, 2009.

Musée du Louvre

La Divine Comédie

Barcelo

Marie-Laure Bernadac

Books

Your next favorite book is out there