• Original 1982 Louise Bourgeois Bourgeois Truth exhibition catalogue, Robert Miller Gallery, New York — cream square softcover with full-bleed black ink drawing of densely hatched grass-like blade forms on aged yellow-cream ground, no title text on cover
  • Interior spread of 1982 Louise Bourgeois Bourgeois Truth — left page with colour photograph of a small figure in a fur coat standing against a stone wall in dim light, mounted on blue-grey card; right page with title page reading Robert Pincus-Witten / BOURGEOIS TRUTH / Robert Miller, New York in serif type
  • Interior spread of 1982 Louise Bourgeois Bourgeois Truth — two black-and-white plates of ink drawings on paper, 1949–51: left showing two vertical organic forms, one a twisted braid and one a flame-like shape rising from a vessel; right showing a dense layered petal or wing form in heavy crosshatched ink
  • Interior spread of 1982 Louise Bourgeois Bourgeois Truth — left page with black-and-white photograph captioned 'Louise Bourgeois in the studio, New York City, 1945', showing the artist kneeling beside a large curved form; right page with two columns of critical essay text by Robert Pincus-Witten
  • Interior spread of 1982 Louise Bourgeois Bourgeois Truth — left page blank; right page with colour plate of a dark polished marble sculpture 'Femme Couteau', 1969, a reclining biomorphic form with rounded protrusions on a red ground
  • Interior rear endpaper spread of 1982 Louise Bourgeois Bourgeois Truth — both pages blank cream with age toning; small rectangular library accession stamp visible at upper left of left page
  • Reverse of 1982 Louise Bourgeois Bourgeois Truth, Robert Miller Gallery — plain cream back cover showing age toning, edge wear, and library stamp to lower left of rear endpaper
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Robert Miller Gallery

Louise Bourgeois — Truth — Robert Pincus-Witten— New York, 1982

Louise Bourgeois — Truth — Robert Pincus-Witten— New York, 1982

Artist
Louise Bourgeois
Publisher
Robert Miller Gallery
Place & year
New York, 1982
Type
Exhibition Catalogue
Format
Softcover, 58 pp., offset printed throughout
Size
25.5 × 25.5 cm
With
Essay by Robert Pincus-Witten
Condition
Good: sold as found; slight spine damage, age toning, handling wear, library stamp to rear endpaper, soft corner wear; the catalogue remains structurally sound.
Register
TNR-2026-0228 · 16 June 2026
£80
£80
Sale Placed
Register No. TNR-2026-0228
Registered 16 June 2026
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Notes

Published in 1982 by Robert Miller Gallery, Bourgeois Truth belongs to a decisive moment in the reception of Louise Bourgeois. Issued the same year as her Museum of Modern Art retrospective, the catalogue sits at the threshold between a long period of relative marginality and the institutional prominence that would follow. Drawings, sculpture, photographs, and critical writing appear together before the later consolidation of the Bourgeois canon.

The title is useful. Truth functions less as description than proposition. Bourgeois’ work repeatedly returned to memory, childhood, fear, desire, repair, and repetition—not as autobiography in a conventional sense but as material capable of being reworked into form. Robert Pincus-Witten’s essay places these concerns within the broader shift from post-minimal abstraction toward a more psychological and bodily language.

Today the catalogue operates differently. Its original task was to support an exhibition. The exhibition closed. The publication remained. What survives is a printed support from a specific New York art world: gallery, critic, artist, audience. A temporary vehicle that outlasted the event it announced.

The library stamp, softened edges, and damaged spine extend that history. Not defects so much as administrative traces. Marks left by storage, handling, accessioning, circulation, and retention.

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