About

Towards the end of her life, Louise Bourgeois often juxtaposed text from past writings and diaries with mixed-media drawings (including watercolor, pencil, etching, and gouache), culminating in complex, multi-paneled works that convey a range of emotions. Between 2004 and 2006, she produced six unique sets of the portfolio Nothing to Remember. Never exhibited previously, this set is composed on 22 individual sheets, some of which are hand-drawn music paper. Ordered as if in a stream of consciousness, the suite’s words and images are an ode to Bourgeois’s personal reminiscences, her attempts at recall, and the loss or slippage of memories as they dissolve with the passing of time. As she aged, Bourgeois became increasingly focused on memory and its fleeting qualities; she grappled with the desire to both retain her recollections and to let them go. Some of the images in Nothing to Remember are abstract – distillations of psychological states or allusions to nature and the inner workings of the body – while some reference figures or objects from Bourgeois’s home. The poetic jumble of imagery is punctuated with evocative phrases ruminating on passing time: “duration”; “premonition”; “the waiting hours”; “the fear of being late”; “I don’t want to  miss my chance.” Together, images and words seem to drift and float by as one moves through the series, giving the impression of memory’s ephemeral and transitory nature. Nothing to Remember is ultimately a poignant record of Bourgeois’s fraught relationship with the dissolution of memory, and the evolution of its effects on her emotional landscape. As stated in one of her personal writings:   The violence, grief and hatred has calmed down I have taken into my arms my memories (bad or good) I have cradled them and soothed them.   Louise Bourgeois, c. 1972 (LB-0012)