Friday, January 20, 2012

Designer of the Month: Louise Bourgeois

Week 3: sculptures and installations

Louise Bourgeois, Dagger Child, 1947–49. Painted wood, 76 1/8 x 5 3/8 x 5 1/8 inches (193.4 x 13.7 x 13 cm). © Louise Bourgeois Trust/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. Courtesy of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (92.4001).

In 1949, Louise Bourgeois had her first sculpture exhibition at New York's Peridot Gallery, showing work made from wood that had been carved, assembled and stacked, with the resulting figures symbolically representing family members and friends.[1] "Even though the shapes are abstract," Bourgeois explained, "they represent people. They are delicate as relationships are delicate. They look on each other and they lean on each other."[2] Known as Personages, the 17 thin, freestanding, vertical forms that were shown at the Peridot Gallery were displayed in such a way that suggested movement.[3] As a result, this exhibition may be considered Bourgeois' first installation piece, with Charlotta Kotik explaining:
In these early sculptures, Bourgeois created a special brand of animism that continues in her work to this day. The figures or objects represent personages close to her not in appearance, but in spirit; they constitute, in fact, a surrogate family. Bourgeois' approach to her art at this time displayed an unprecedented fusion of the rational and intuitive. She concentrated on the spiritual function of her sculpture, using form, materials, techniques, and scale to give tangible expression to the traumatizing experiences of her own life in a heroic attempt to exorcize them.[4]
Louise Bourgeois, Cumul I, 1969. White marble on wood base, 51 x 127 x 122 cm. State purchase 1973, attribution 1976. AM 1976-933. © CNAC / MNAM dist.RMN / Philippe Migeat. © Adagp, Paris 2008. Courtesy of the Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, Paris.

In 1951, Bourgeois became an American citizen.[5] Although this was a period during which she largely withdrew from the commercial art world, she spent much of the 1960s teaching in public schools, at Brooklyn College and at Pratt Institute, continuing to lecture at various institutions through the 1970s.[6] The end of the 1960s signaled a new period for Bourgeois, defined a pronounced shift in form with the creation of biomorphic sculptures through experimentation with materials such as latex, resin and plaster.[7] It was during this period and into the 1970s that Bourgeois' work became much more sexually explicit, exploring the body, gender and anthropomorphism, as well as a frequent use of marble as a sculptural material, which she liked to work with because it gave the illusion of the softness of skin.[8] Bourgeois also became appreciated by a wider public during this time as a result of the change in attitudes wrought by feminism and Post-modernism, with her work expanding to include larger three-dimensional work and environmental installations, and expanding yet again after the acquisition of a large Brooklyn studio in 1980.[9]

Louise Bourgeois, Cell (Choisy), 1990-1993. Pink marble, metal and glass, 306 x 170,20 x 241 cm. Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation, Toronto. Photograph by Peter Bellamy. © Adagp, Paris 2008. Courtesy of the Centre Pompidou, Paris.

The expansion of Bourgeois' workspace in 1980 coincided with a desire to create larger environmental installations - physical spaces capable of signifying memory, time and recognition.[10] In particular, Bourgeois' Cells pieces from the 1990s - self-contained installations that deny entrance to their interiors - serve as manifestations of complex psychological narratives.[11] "Each Cell deals with fear," explains Bourgeois, "Each Cell deals with the pleasures of the voyeur, the thrill of looking and being looked at. The Cells either attract or repulse each other. There is this urge to integrate, merge, or disintegrate."[12] Like much of her work, Bourgeois' Cells serve not only as narratives of a personal history, but the cathartic representations of a lifetime of emotional struggle.


[1] Charlotta Kotik, "The Locus of Memory: An Introduction to the Work of Louise Bourgeois," from Louise Bourgeois: The Locus of Memory, Works 1982-1993, ed. Charlotta Kotik, Terrie Sultan and Christian Leigh, (New York: The Brooklyn Museum in Association with Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 1994), 18.


[2] Ibid., 18.


[3] Guggenheim Museum online, "Selected Works: Personages," from the exhibition Louise Bourgeois (June 27 - September 28, 2008), http://pastexhibitions.guggenheim.org/bourgeois/exhibition.html (accessed January 19, 2012).


[4] Charlotta Kotik, "The Locus of Memory: An Introduction to the Work of Louise Bourgeois," from Louise Bourgeois: The Locus of Memory, Works 1982-1993, ed. Charlotta Kotik, Terrie Sultan and Christian Leigh, (New York: The Brooklyn Museum in Association with Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 1994), 18.


[5] Guggenheim Museum online, "Biography," from the exhibition Louise Bourgeois (June 27 - September 28, 2008), http://pastexhibitions.guggenheim.org/bourgeois/exhibition.html (accessed January 19, 2012).


[6] Ibid.


[7] Guggenheim Museum online, "Selected Works: Biomorphic Forms," from the exhibition Louise Bourgeois (June 27 - September 28, 2008), http://pastexhibitions.guggenheim.org/bourgeois/exhibition.html (accessed January 19, 2012).


[8] Centre Pompidou online, "Metamorphosis as a Principle of the Work: The Ambiguity of Materials, Shapes and Meaning," from the exhibition Louise Bourgeois (March 5 - June 2, 2008), http://www.centrepompidou.fr/education/ressources//ENS-bourgeois-EN//ENS-bourgeois-EN.html (accessed January 19, 2012).


[9] Guggenheim Museum online, "Biography," from the exhibition Louise Bourgeois (June 27 - September 28, 2008), http://pastexhibitions.guggenheim.org/bourgeois/exhibition.html (accessed January 19, 2012).


[10] Terrie Sultan, "Redefining the Terms of Engagement: The Art of Louise Bourgeois," from Louise Bourgeois: The Locus of Memory, Works 1982-1993, ed. Charlotta Kotik, Terrie Sultan and Christian Leigh, (New York: The Brooklyn Museum in Association with Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 1994), 39.

[11] Guggenheim Museum online, "Biography," from the exhibition Louise Bourgeois (June 27 - September 28, 2008), http://pastexhibitions.guggenheim.org/bourgeois/exhibition.html (accessed January 19, 2012). 

[12] Louise Bourgeois, artist's statement in The Carnegie International, reproduced by Terrie Sultan, "Redefining the Terms of Engagement: The Art of Louise Bourgeois," from Louise Bourgeois: The Locus of Memory, Works 1982-1993, ed. Charlotta Kotik, Terrie Sultan and Christian Leigh, (New York: The Brooklyn Museum in Association with Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 1994), 41.

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