Overview

Progressing by image and word associations, Fremon evokes Bourgeois's history and inner life, bringing a sense of fascinating and moving proximity to the internationally renowned artist... The art world's grande dame and its shameless old lady, who spun personal history into works of profound strangeness, speaks out with her characteristic insolence and wit, and comes to vibrant life again through the words of a most discrete, masterful writer. From her childhood in France to her exile and life in America, to her death; her relationships to her family and her young assistant, her views on landmark male artists, the genesis of her own work... through the moods, barbs, resentments, reservations and back, at full speed - this is a phosphorescent account of Bourgeois's life, as could only be captured by the imagination of one artist regarding another.

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9780993009389

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Reviews

'The life of Louise Bourgeois is rendered in ellipsis, quick brush strokes, and a mix of associations of ideas and of sensations waltzing with chronology. An original, sensitive text.' - Liberation. 'Jean Fremon brings Louise Bourgeois close into a fascinating and moving proximity.' - ArtPress. `Jean Fremon is a wholly singular artist, a writer who lives in the radiant zone where poetry, philosophy and storytelling meet.' - Paul Auster. 'Like all the most urgent poetry, it is fragile and momentary, but momentarily invincible. ' John Ashbery

"'A truly wonderful book... The spider woman, the intellectuel, the rebel, the sly enchantress, and the good girl sing together in this exuberant, lithe text, beautifully translated by Cole Swensen.' - SIRI HUSTVEDT. `Now, Now Louison draws the reader in with all of the monstrous elegance of a spider, capturing us in the fine web of the creative process, and revealing, with biting wit and lyrical style, the ego, and sacrifices it takes to make monumental work.' - PRETI TANEJA, laureate of the Desmond Elliott Prize 2018 for 'We That Are Young'. `Jean Fremon is a wholly singular artist, a writer who lives in the radiant zone where poetry, philosophy and storytelling meet.' - PAUL AUSTER. 'Like all the most urgent poetry, it is ""fragile and momentary, but momentarily invincible.""' JOHN ASHBERY. 'As much a portrait of Bourgeois as it is of one who has outlasted another and is trying, in full knowledge of an impending failure, to reassemble a figure from the fragments. Perhaps life, this life, any life, is best preserved in its many bits, just as it was lived.' - FRIEZE. `Metamorphosing like Arachne, Bourgeois's imagined voice recounts how she wove the detritus of her memory (...) into an art of resistence (...) Now, Now, Louison (a reference to her childhood nickname) is a sensitive portrait of a woman whose struggle for self-definition came to drive her artistic practice.' Financial Times 'The life of Louise Bourgeois is rendered in ellipsis, quick brush strokes, and a mix of associations of ideas and of sensations waltzing with chronology. An original, sensitive text.' - ArtPress."

'A truly wonderful book... The spider woman, the intellectuel, the rebel, the sly enchantes, and the good girl sing together in this exuberant, lite text, beautifully translated by Cole Swensen.' Siri Hustvedt. `Now, Now Louison draws the reader in with all of the monstrous elegance of a spider, capturing us in the fine web of the creative process, and revealing, with biting wit and lyrical style, the ego, and sacrifices it takes to make monumental work.' Preti Taneja, author of We That Are Young. 'The life of Louise Bourgeois is rendered in ellipsis, quick brush strokes, and a mix of associations of ideas and of sensations waltzing with chronology. An original, sensitive text.' - Liberation. 'Jean Fremon brings Louise Bourgeois close into a fascinating and moving proximity.' - ArtPress. `Jean Fremon is a wholly singular artist, a writer who lives in the radiant zone where poetry, philosophy and storytelling meet.' - Paul Auster. 'Like all the most urgent poetry, it is fragile and momentary, but momentarily invincible. ' John Ashbery

Author Information

Jean Frémon has been contributing to a trans-genre tendency in contemporary French letters since 1969. The president of Galerie Lelong by day, and a writer by night, he has published over twenty books in France, including poetry (translated by Lydia Davis et al.), fiction and essays on art. His work has been translated into English, Spanish, German, Norwegian and Turkish. His poetry has received praise from John Ashbery, Paul Auster and Rosemarie Waldrop. Some of the artists with whom he has worked the most closely include Antoni Tapies, Donald Judd, Jannis Kounellis, Sean Scully, David Hockney and Louise Bourgeois. In 1985, he commissioned Louise Bourgeois's first European exhibition. Thirty years later, he organised her last, which she curated, at the Maison de Balzac in Paris. Now, Now, Louison is his first book published in the UK. 

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