“This is reality [...] this is the everyday. The subject is trivial [...] they are just like little onions. But it gives pleasure to look at [...] it holds together. They relate harmoniously like seeds […] they are an aggregate [...] like a society of members that holds together. The society can be self-supporting and independent [...] This is about seeing coherence, poetry, and a satisfying quality on the everyday level.”
—Louise Bourgeois in reference to the right plate
Executed between 1989 and 2003, Toi et Moi (Sleeping Figure; Swaying) is an exquisite example of Louise Bourgeois’ complex and powerful artistic practice. It consists of a pair of etchings, produced as number one in a series of nine impressions. Bourgeois designated these works as “studies” and made subsequent watercolour and gouache hand additions to each of these impressions, with the present work considered unique by the Louise Bourgeois archive and online catalogue raisonné, held by The Museum of Modern Art.i Extending upwards from the floor, the structure in the left panel is picked out with black pigment, affording it stability. It is directly related to Bourgeois’ painted balsa wood sculpture, Sleeping Figure (1950), held in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art. In contrast, the repeating seed-like structure in the right panel hangs freely downwards from the ceiling. Accentuated by pink watercolour, the bulbous, repeating form is reminiscent of Yayoi Kusama’s Accumulation sculptures (1962) and Bourgeois’ own later fabric sculptures. Functioning as a diptych, each panel directly counterbalances the other formally, conceptually and chromatically, evincing a harmony that rests at the core of Bourgeois’ artistic practice.
The composition originally developed in 1989 from discussions with Benjamin Shiff, then director of the publishing house Osiris in New York, as a preliminary trial for the illustrated book, the puritan (1990-1997). Although it did not appear in the publication, Bourgeois and Shiff returned to the work in 2003. A separate edition of the present work was published in the illustrated book, One’s Sleep (2003).
