FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 13, 2007
 
Haggerty Museum to host exhibition of Louise Bourgeois’ recent prints
 
(Milwaukee, WI) The Haggerty Museum of Art at Marquette University will host an exhibition of recent prints by the groundbreaking and innovative French-born artist Louise Bourgeois from July 26 – October 1, 2007. “Louise Bourgeois, Recent Projects” features two limited edition series in a minimalist style that will be shown together for the first time: “Fugue”, a portfolio of 19 screenprints with lithography created in 2003, and a suite of untitled screenprints on vintage fabric from 2002. Procuniar Workshop is the publisher of both series in this exhibition which was curated by Haggerty associate curator Annemarie Sawkins. A video excerpt in which Bourgeois expresses the psychological and familial motivations behind her art will be shown continuously throughout the duration of the exhibition. This exhibition is sponsored in part by the Martha and Ray Smith, Jr. Endowment Fund and the Wisconsin Arts Board.
 
Bourgeois (b.1911) has been creating art for over eight decades in all media and continues to produce new works. She first began drawing as a child and used her artistic skills to help reconstruct missing portions of tapestries being restored by her mother and grandmother as part of the family business. This early experience had a profound impact on Bourgeois. Frances Morris, senior curator of the Tate Modern states, “… remaking or reweaving was a skill at the centre of her mother’s industry and one that underpins much of Bourgeois’ own art, both in her insistent revisiting of themes and her recycling of materials.” Bourgeois says, “All my work…all my subjects, have found their inspiration in my childhood.  My childhood has never lost its magic, it has never lost its mystery, and it has never lost its drama.”
 
The 19 works of “Fugue” were produced along with an artist-signed colophon in an edition of nine with one artist’s proof. Edition number eight of nine is the version presented in this exhibition. The inspirational drawings for “Fugue “ were first done in a music composition book. The paper used in this portfolio was first lithographed with staff lines by Chris Robinson at the Procuniar Workshop in order to replicate the backdrop of the pages of the music composition book. The staff paper motif also relates to the title of the boxed portfolio which was first suggested by the artist’s son Jean-Louis after seeing the prints. The colored areas were printed by serigraphy or screenprinting using hand-cut rubilith to mask the screens.