Two of the most original artists of the postwar period, Louise Bourgeois and Jenny Holzer, meet in this exceptional artist's book conceived and designed by Holzer to accompany the Bourgeois exhibition she has curated at the Kunstmuseum Basel.
Despite their formal differences, both artists share a strong interest in psychological and emotional states, such as love, desire, sexuality, rejection, jealousy, murder, suicide, dependency, and abandonment. Where Holzer approaches these subjects from a more sociopolitical angle, Bourgeois derives them from her own psychic life.
Holzer's book is not a document of her Bourgeois exhibition but rather a parallel work that further mines the dynamic interplay between text and image in Bourgeois' art. Working in a sumptuous oversize format, she has set up a nonlinear narrative through juxtapositions of Bourgeois' works and writings, deploying extreme close-ups, dramatic croppings, full-page bleeds, and other devices to startle and refocus our attention on Bourgeois' preoccupations and obsessions. At times these juxtapositions are enriched with works chosen from the historical collections of the Kunstmuseum Basel. The resultant confrontations are unexpected, jarring, and inspiring.
A fascinating montage of images and writings, this volume offers a unique perspective on Bourgeois' extraordinary oeuvre as filtered through Holzer's gaze.
The artist's book is accompanied by a booklet with texts by Kunstmuseum Basel director Josef Helfenstein and curator Anita Haldemann.
