62
Louise Bourgeois
The View from the Bottom of the Well (MoMA 568-576)
- Estimate
- $20,000 - 30,000
$27,720
Lot Details
The complete set of nine drypoints, on Somerset paper, with full margins, lacking the original red cloth-covered portfolio.
1996
I. 8 1/2 x 6 1/4 in. (21.6 x 15.9 cm)
S. 13 1/8 x 10 1/4 in. (33.3 x 26 cm)
S. 13 1/8 x 10 1/4 in. (33.3 x 26 cm)
All signed with initials and numbered 'PP 5/5' in pencil (printer's proofs, the edition was 25 there were also 10 in Roman numerals), published by Peter Blum Edition, New York, all framed.
Specialist
Full-Cataloguing
Catalogue Essay
"When you are at the bottom of the well, you look around and you say, who is going to get me out? In this case, Jerry [Gorovoy, the artist's assistant,] comes and he presents a rope, and I hook myself on the rope and he pulls me out. You see I can conceive of a way of getting out of the well. I'm not drowning. I'm just waiting for somebody." Interview with Lawrence Rinder, 9 May 1995, Frances Morris, Louise Bourgeois, Tate Modern, London, 2007, p. 150
Literature
Louise Bourgeois
French-American | B. 1911 D. 2010Known for her idiosyncratic style, Louise Bourgeois was a pioneering and iconic figure of twentieth and early twenty-first century art. Untied to an art historical movement, Bourgeois was a singular voice, both commanding and quiet.Bourgeois was a prolific printmaker, draftsman, sculptor and painter. She employed diverse materials including metal, fabric, wood, plaster, paper and paint in a range of scale — both monumental and intimate. She used recurring themes and subjects (animals, insects, architecture, the figure, text and abstraction) as form and metaphor to explore the fragility of relationships and the human body. Her artworks are meditations of emotional states: loneliness, jealousy, pride, anger, fear, love and longing.
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