Intimate Geometries: The Art and Life of Louise Bourgeois is the definitive survey of one of the 20th century’s most prolific and versatile artists, whose 75-year career and immense oeuvre encompassed sculpture, installations, painting, drawing, printmaking and writing. Pentagram designed the landmark 828-page book by Robert Storr, which combines a critical biography with a monograph of the artist, weaving together text and image to create a full portrait.

Storr, a noted curator and critic, was a close personal friend of Bourgeois, and the artist entrusted him to tell her story. The result is a monumental biography that illuminates the artist’s life and art-making process in a narrative with more than 1,000 illustrations. The challenge for the designers was to balance the the unusual amount of images––much more than the typical biography––with the extensive text. The design had to be readerly and accommodate visual content from all eras of Bourgeois’s career.

Unlike traditional monographs, which place the essays up front, followed by plates, the book has been structured as a continuous visual story, a running dialogue between the artist and writer. The format echoes the scope of Bourgeois’s work, simultaneously mammoth (an oversized 11.9 by 15.4 inches and weighing almost 13 pounds) and personal. The book is divided into six chronological chapters, each opening with an illustrated biographical narrative that incorporates personal photographs, ephemera and images of work, then segueing into a portfolio of pieces from the period. The typography references the classical and modern aspects of Bourgeois’s work, contrasting the elegant serif Musee with the contemporary sans serif Blender.

The book’s size gave the designers an opportunity to create packaging for the volume. The massive book is housed in a box that doubles as a carrying case, complete with handle. The packaging pictures one of the artist’s web-like pattern paintings (from 2005), giving it an eye-catching presence in bookstores. The pattern is also used as a wrap-around illustration on the cover of the book itself, while the jacket features Robert Mapplethorpe’s 1982 portrait of the artist. 

Pentagram worked closely with the book’s publisher, Monacelli Press, and editor, Christopher Lyon of Lyon Artbooks, to complete the project.

The New York Times selected Intimate Geometries as one of the Best Art Books of 2017.