For Louise Bourgeois, collecting textiles of all kinds—from table cloths and towels to her mother’s dresses and her husband’s undergarments—was a way of maintaining her bond with those who owned them. “These articles were like the pages of her own diary,” Ralph Rugoff, director of London’s Hayward Gallery, tells Holly Black in an interview on the subject for the current issue of Elephant. “She couldn’t bear to part with them because she identified them so strongly with the people who had worn and used them.” Instead, in later life, the artist used them to create exceptionally expressive and evocative sculptures like The Good Mother (seen here). Purchase Elephant Issue 47 here to read on.
