August 2009
“When family members or loved ones traveled, Louise would open the atlas
and find exactly the place where the person was going. She’d study which
rivers were nearby, which mountains, which towns. If she loved you, she
needed to be able to locate you in physical space.” —Deborah Wye,
curator of MoMA's 1982 Louise Bourgeois retrospective
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- Art & Design
Louise’s Last Year
Hugely prolific, eternally provocative, and considered by many to be the greatest female artist of the 20th century, Louise Bourgeois died this past May at age 98. During the last year of her life, photographer Alex Van Gelder shot hundreds of pictures of Bourgeois in her New York town house. “It wasn’t just a matter of taking a portrait,” says the Dutchman. “Louise saw it as an extension of her work.” Seen here for the first time—along with tributes from friends and admirers—Van Gelder’s intimate, unvarnished photographs were the last taken of Bourgeois. “It was a great honor and a great responsibility,” he says. “I wanted to demonstrate her strength and her beauty—both of which she held on to until the very, very end.”
September 2010
September 2010
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