The ten drypoints that comprise Homely Girl, A Life were brought together by gallerist and publisher Peter Blum, with whom Bourgeois had already collaborated for her 1990 Anatomy portfolio. Blum had long been interested in publishing a book by the playwright Arthur Miller, who had written the renowned 20th century American plays The Crucible and Death of a Salesman. When Blum saw that Miller’s wife, Inge Morath, had shot Bourgeois’ portrait for a book of collective photographs, he had the idea to bring the artist and author together. At the impetus of the project, Miller visited Bourgeois’ Brooklyn studio and became interested in several sculptures in her Cells series, which concerns the senses of sight, hearing, and smell. Inspired by the themes of these pieces, Miller chose for the project a previously unpublished story that told the tale of a woman – the eponymous ‘homely girl’ – who struggles against the judgement of her materialistic family and the orthodoxy of her Stalinist husband until she meets a blind classical musician, who loves her for the beauty of her character.
“She walked beside him, surprised by his good pace. What life in his fluttering eyelids! It was like walking with a sighted man but some undefined feeling of freedom was threatening to bring tears of happiness to her eyes. She heard her own voice, which seemed to fly out of her mouth with all the open innocence of a young girl’s.”
—Excerpt from Arthur Miller’s Homely Girl,
A LifeThe artwork Bourgeois produced to accompany Miller’s text was nothing short of striking and uncompromising, and the resulting illustrated book was presented in two volumes, volume one containing 10 black and white drypoints based on floral ballpoint pen drawings Bourgeois created in 1992 and volume two containing photolithographs by the artist that reproduced ophthalmological photographs of diseased eyes, emphasizing the role of sight (or lack thereof) in the short story. This portfolio version presently on offer contains all the compositions from first volume of the illustrated book; the compositions in the second volume were not produced in a portfolio format. Mirroring the arc of Miller’s protagonist as she emotionally develops, the progression of Bourgeois’ delicately rendered drypoint plants suggest a growing, latent eroticism as they sprout, blossom, and break apart over the course of the portfolio.
