Neckties

 

Louise Bourgeois | Ear

Louise Bourgeois
Ear
New York City, USA: Carolina Nitsch Editions, 2002
10.2 x 23.5 x 20.3 cm.
Edition of 20 [+ 3 AP] initialed, dated and numbered copies


A urethane resin multiple, manufactured at the Modern Art Foundry in Long Island City, New York. The work features the artist's initials and date incised on the label affixed to the underside of the support.



"A New York art dealer and publisher of editions, Carolina Nitsch began her involvement with Bourgeois's prints in the 1990s as director of Brooke Alexander Gallery, where she included the artist's work in her inventory. Those prints were primarily from publisher Ben Shiff of Osiris imprint, and Nitsch continued working with Shiff and his prints after starting her own business in 2000. She eventually published her own editions with Bourgeois and also become her primary print dealer.

Nitsch's first Bourgeois publication, The Young Girl, came in 2006 as part of the benefit series she continues to produce for the New Museum. That print includes drypoint, hand coloring, fabric, and paper, a hybrid combination that is frequently found in Nitsch's work with the artist. In fact, Nitsch's publishing practice generally fosters the stretching of printmaking's traditional boundaries.

During Bourgeois's last years, Nitsch served a primary role, issuing highly significant projects such as Hours of the Day, a fabric book, and The Fragile, a multipart installation piece. For these, and other prints on fabric, Nitsch depended on Raylene Marasco of Dyenamix, a firm specializing in printing and dyeing textiles. She also relied on the collaboration of Bourgeois's assistant, Jerry Gorovoy, who facilitated the back-and-forth collaboration with the artist. Nitsch's publications culminated in Do Not Abandon Me, of 2009–10, a series Bourgeois worked on together with British artist Tracey Emin."

- MoMA

Louise Bourgeois | No No No

Louise Bourgeois
No No No [Cultural Ties]
New York City, USA: Unicef, 2000
45.3 x 15.5 x 4.5 cm, boxed
Edition of 300

Manufactured by Versace's tie-maker, Ratti, this work is part of a series of over seventy neckties published for the benefit of UNICEF. Other artists from the series include Jake & Dinos Chapman,  Richard Wilson,Yayoi Kusama, Lucy Orta, Tom Phillips, Jeff Koons, Alex Katz, Peter Blake, Shinro Ohtake, Cameron Jamie, and Makoto Aida.

In 1973, Bourgeois joined a protest march in support of striking employees from the Museum of Modern Art. She carried a sign on which she had repeatedly painted the word "no." The sign was painted on the back of an untitled painting from over 25 years prior, which now is housed in the collection of the Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller in Otterlo, Netherlands.

Shortly afterwards, Bourgeois executed a large collage using cut-outs from newspapers and magazine clippings, displaying the word "no" in various typefaces and sizes.

She returned to this motif in 1992, when approached to produce a benefit print for Doctors of the World, a French humanitarian organization.

This tie, produced eight years later, reproduces No (1) in red and blue, with the artist's signature embroidered in red thread on the lining. It is made from woven silk and cotton.