Author(s): Jean Fremon and Louise Bourgeois

Art | Les Fugitives

‘How should one paint the baby Jesus? This deceptively innocent question runs the length of Jean Frémon's Nativity, a fictional work that takes as its subject the first painter to represent the saviour of humankind without his swaddling clothes. The book is a miniature portrait in itself, running for fewer than 50 pages and punctuated by a series of evocative drawings by the artist Louise Bourgeois. With the bells of Christmas ringing faintly in the distance, Nativity offers a stylish, expressive new study into artistic representations of Christianity's founding story.’ — The Arts Desk

‘One day in 2007,’ recalls Jean Frémon about a visit to artist Louise Bourgeois’s studio, ‘I discovered an entirely new series of drawings…. silhouettes of women with embryos in their wombs, drawn with a brush full of water and red gouache. These drawings were, for me, the most poignant of her long career. Each time I visited, Louise would ask me about what I was writing. … I said: it’s the story of the first painter who had the idea of representing the baby Jesus completely naked rather than in swaddling clothes…. Louise asked me for the text, which I sent to her. When I next came to visit her, five drawings were awaiting me to illustrate the book. The French edition was published by Fata Morgana on 25 December 2009, the birthday not only of Jesus, but also of Louise Bourgeois. Several weeks later, Louise signed the fifteen books that made up the limited edition.’

‘The nativity that Frémon’s work is deeply indebted to and preoccupied with is that of artistic ideas – the naissance of a way of thinking, of seeing, of representing – and the cultural precedent they subsequently set in motion (…) Frémon’s inclusion of Bourgeois’ drawings not only speaks directly into art history’s marked exclusion and omission of women from this tradition, but also rights it by having Bourgeois have her say on birth and motherhood.'

‘Frémon’s decision to focus on a painter and his mission brings something very personal to the history encompassed within this short essay (...) [t]he five paintings by Bourgeois are made up of red brushstrokes, and depict the more human side of the Christmas story: a child swelling in the womb, a birth, a hungry newborn (…) The reflections are compelling and lucidly composed; in contrast the representations offered by Bourgeois are carnal, showing that for all the divine wonder of the Nativity, it is also the story of a first-time mother giving birth in extraordinary – and probably terrifying – circumstances.’ — Helen Vassalo, Translating Women