This unique sketch was completed by Louise Bourgeois as a list of talking points and reminders of where she had lived and the types of houses the artist lived in for an interview with House & Garden magazine. The other side of the page is a warning to assistants not to touch her tools. The article was originally published with a portrait photo by Irving Penn. "despite tragedies within a house, or my own fragilities, for me the house is a storage place for memories. You have to acknowledge your memories in order to understand yourself." – Louise Bourgeois quoted in "The Houses That Louise Built" House & Garden, October 1992.
Known for her idiosyncratic style, Louise Bourgeois was a pioneering and iconic figure of twentieth and early twenty-first century art. Untied to an art historical movement, Bourgeois was a singular voice, both commanding and quiet.
Bourgeois was a prolific printmaker, draftsman, sculptor and painter. She employed diverse materials including metal, fabric, wood, plaster, paper and paint in a range of scale — both monumental and intimate. She used recurring themes and subjects (animals, insects, architecture, the figure, text and abstraction) as form and metaphor to explore the fragility of relationships and the human body. Her artworks are meditations of emotional states: loneliness, jealousy, pride, anger, fear, love and longing.