Rebecca Massie Lane, Director of College Galleries and Arts Management Program

"Do you know the New York sky? You should, it is supposed to be known. It is outstanding. It is a serious thing." Thus begins Louise Bourgeois' book, the puritan. Written in 1947, the text goes on to say, "But the New York sky is blue, utterly blue. The light is white, a glorying white, and the air is strong and it is healthy too." The book reader/viewer is instantaneously drawn in to this engaging narrative. Fifty years later, in 1997, we might wonder about the idea of the New York sky as a healthy thing. Yet, the enigma of the text, in conjunction with the abstract, geometric imagery leads us eagerly through the book with its 8 illustrations and its text which goes on to tell about New York streets and buildings. "The sky, the building, and the house, knew each other and approved of each other," writes Bourgeois. And in this condition of approval lived a particular man who abode in one of the New York structures. Here the illustration is reminiscent of early modernist, clean, ladder-like skyscrapers, supported by steel spines and encased in a clear glass rectangle, open to the New York sky. Beorgeois goes on to develop her relationship to the man, and soon the narrative becomes a love story, then lost love, then the death of the man. Bourgeois writes, "Of course no one could see his soul, not even his wife. But they said that his body was dry and they think he was a purtian." On this page is an illustration which is tunnel-like, evocative of the journey into the underworld.

The book is a hand-colored artbook by Louise Bourgeois, one of the best-known living women artists today. Like other artbooks, it is a combination of text and original art. This evocative book combines a poetic fable-like text with purified modernist architectonic images. She said, "with the puritan I analyzed an episode forty years after it happened. I could see things from a distance... I put it on a grid. Geometry was a tool to understanding... "¹ Ms. Bourgeois conceived of the book and wrote it in 1947, but did not begin making it until 1989; the Sweet Briar College edition, number 32, was completed in 1996. Working with publisher Benjamin Shiff, Bourgeois chose the text and the illustrations, which were based on 1988 drawings on colored paper in pencil, colored ink, and gouache.²

the puritan was not the only book Bourgeois conceived in 1947; in fact, it was one of at least three texts. A second book was actually completely produced in 1947 and bears some similarity to the puritan. Entitled He Disappeared into Complete Silence, this book also combines fairy-tale-like text with in engravings (9 of them). In this book, however, each page has a different short tale. Included in the Grimmish narratives are stories of love, architecture, anger, violence, abandonment, and selfishness. Although, according to Deborah Wye and Carol Smith³, Bourgeois cautioned us not to link the prints too closely to the narratives, the surreal illustrations picture wooden figures, threatening contrapsions, exposed elevator shafts, and gallow-like constructions, which heighten the emotion of the often visceral narratives. Whereas the artist discussed geometry as the overarching philosophical tenet of the puritan, she described He Disappeared... as "a drama of the self... It is about the fear of going overboard and hurting others. Controlling oneself is always the goal... so one will not project one's own violence on others."⁴ This book she called "a descent... a descent into depression. But I believe in resurrection in the morning. This is a withdrawal, but it is temporary. You lose your self-esteem, but you pull yourself up again. This is about survival... about the will to survive."⁵ According to Wye and Smith, the production of this book was a tremendous effort for Bourgeois: Bourgeois herself said, "It was a real exorcism just to get all the prints out."⁶

Little wonder, then, that her story the puritan was laid aside unrealized for fifty years. Now in her late 80s, Bourgeois is recognized as a grande dame of the contemporary art world. Her artistic life bridges five decades; she was born in 1911, the year after Sweet Briar College graduated its first class of students. How will this opus of Bourgeois' be used by Sweet Briar students? First, its content speaks to the emotions of young women, for it was the product of Bourgeois' youth. It represents the dedication of a lifetime of work embodied in one work which spanned the artist's long career; there is much to be learned from such a lifetime. The artwork is of the highest calibre of refinement, representing a lifetime of artistic decision-making in the choice of one color, one shape, one background in relation to particular words which make up part of a whole story. This work uncovers the artistic process of image-making and word-making and of the two entwined. It is amusing, didactic, inspirational, a most fitting work for a woman's college art collection. the puritan will be on display during Orientation.

1. Quoted in The Prints of Louise Bourgeois by Deborah Wye and Carol Smith, Museum of Modern Art (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994), p. 191.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid., p. 72.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

the puritan, text by Louise Bourgeois, 1947 (with postscript 1990) 8 engravings, 1990, handcolored, 1990-93 25 15/16" x 19 11/16" 32 unpaginated folios edition: 32/75

the puritan, (4)

the puritan, (5)