Louise Bourgeois
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| Louise Bourgeois | |
 Maman, by Louise Bourgeois, is a 30-foot (9.1 m)-tall spider. This copy of the bronze sculpture was photographed outside the National Gallery of Canada |
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| Born | December 25, 1911 Paris, France |
| Field | Sculpture, Painting |
| Training | École du Louvre, École des Beaux-Arts, worked as an assistant to Fernand Léger, Art Students League of New York |
Louise Bourgeois (French pronunciation: [luiz buʁʒwa]; born December 25, 1911) is an artist and sculptor. Her most famous works are possibly the spider structures, titled Maman, from the last dozen years.
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[edit] Early life
Louise Bourgeois was born in Paris, France. Her parents repaired tapestries. At 12, she started helping them draw the missing segments of the tapestries. At 15 she studied mathematics at the Sorbonne. Her studies of geometry contributed to her early cubist drawings. Still searching, she began painting, studying at the École du Louvre and then the École des Beaux-Arts, and worked as an assistant to Fernand Léger. In 1938 she moved with her American husband, Robert Goldwater, to New York City to continue her studies at the Art Students League of New York, feeling that she would not have stayed an artist had she continued to live in Paris. [1]
She lives and works in New York City.
[edit] Work
She is best known for her 'Cells', 'Spiders' and various drawings, books and sculptures. Her works are sometimes abstract and she speaks of them in symbolic terms with the main focus being "relationships" - considering an entity in relation to its surroundings. Louise Bourgeois finds inspiration for her works from her childhood: her adulterous father, who had an affair with her governess (who resided in the home), and her mother, who refused to acknowledge it. She claims that she has been the "striking-image" of her father since birth. Bourgeois conveys feelings of anger, betrayal and jealousy, but with playfulness. In her sculpture, she has worked in many different mediums, including rubber, wood, stone, metal, and appropriately for someone who came from a family of tapestry makers, fabric. Some of her pieces consisted of erotic and sexual images, with a motif of "cumuls" (she named the round figures such because they reminded her of cumulus clouds). Her most famous works are possibly the spider structures, titled Maman, from the last dozen years. Maman now stands outside Tate Modern in London. A similar sculpture was featured at an art exhibition in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
Her earliest exhibition, in 1947, consisted of tunnel sculptures and wooden figures, including The Winged Figure (1948). Despite early success in that show, with one of the works being purchased for the Museum of Modern Art, Bourgeois was subsequently ignored by the art market during the fifties and sixties. It was in the seventies, after the deaths of her husband and father, that she became a successful artist.
In 1993 she represented the United States at the Venice Biennale. In 1999 she participated in the Melbourne International Biennial 1999. Also in 1999, Bourgeois was the first artist commissioned to fill the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern.
| “ | Three large steel towers, about 30 feet (9.1 m) high, fill the east end of the Turbine Hall. Each tower supports a platform on which two chairs are surrounded by a series of large swivel mirrors. The mirrors with their reflective surfaces create an space for contemplation and reflection. Visitors are able to mount spiral staircases on the towers to experience the space of the platform and the Turbine Hall. Bourgeois imagines that the platforms will become the stage for significant conversations and human confrontations. Adjacent to the towers and straddling the bridge of the Turbine Hall is an 35 feet (11 m) high spider by Bourgeois, the largest she has made.[2] | ” |
The installations were later dismantled, the spider sculpture ("Maman") was relocated to Ottawa, where it stands outside the entrance to the National Gallery of Canada.
All of Bourgeois' sculptures incorporate a sense of vulnerability and fragility. Her works are often viewed to have a sense of sexuality to them, which she believed is a large part of both vulnerability and fragility. [1]
[edit] Inspiration for future generations of artists
In October 2007, The Observer interviewed a number of British contemporary artists, Rachel Whiteread, Dorothy Cross, Stella Vine, Richard Wentworth and Jane and Louise Wilson, about how Louise Bourgeois's art inspired them, in an article called Kisses for Spiderwoman.[3] Vine described Bourgeois as one of the "greatest ever artists" and said that "few female artists have been recognised as truly important". She said there was a "juxtaposition of sinister, controlling elements and full-on macho materials with a warm, nurturing and cocoon-like feminine side" that appears within Bourgeois' art. Vine also described Bourgeois as: ""incredible: she's known all these great men and outlived them all."[3]
On 12th November 2007, leading British artists Antony Gormley, Tracey Emin and Stella Vine again, were all interviewed by Alan Yentob for BBC One's series Imagine in the documentary Spiderwoman about the life and art of Louise Bourgeois.[4]
[edit] Documentary
Bourgeois' life, career, and creative process is examined in the 2008 documentary film Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress and the Tangerine.
[edit] Gallery
 Crouching Spider (2003), San Francisco, California, USA. |
 Maman, located outside the National Gallery of Canada. |
 Tomb of the Belgian painter James Ensor, temporarily enclosed by (The Spider) by Louise Bourgeois during the art happening "Beaufort 2006", Oostende, Belgium. |
[edit] See also
List of artworks by Louise Bourgeois
[edit] References
- ^ a b Robert Ayers (July 28, 2006), Louise Bourgeois, ARTINFO, http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/19186/louise-bourgeois/, retrieved on 2008-04-23
- ^ Special Exhibitions
- ^ a b Fox, Killian and Toms, Katie. Kisses for Spiderwoman, Louise Bourgeois., The Observer, 14 October 2007. Retrieved 31 January 2009.
- ^ "Imagine, Transmission Tuesday, 13th November 2007 Louise Bourgeois, Spiderwoman" BBC Online, 13 November 2007. Retrieved 10 December 2008
[edit] Books
- Marika Herskovic, American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s An Illustrated Survey, (New York School Press, 2003.) ISBN 0-9677994-1-4
- Marika Herskovic, New York School Abstract Expressionists Artists Choice by Artists, (New York School Press, 2000.) ISBN 0-9677994-0-6
- Louise Bourgeois : La Sage Femme, 2007 [Exhibition catalog].
[edit] Further reading
- Falconer, M (2007-09-15). "Listen with ‘Mother’". Visual Arts (The Times). http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article2433343.ece. Retrieved on 2007-09-28.
- Huhn, Rosi. "Louise Bourgois", in: Inside the Visible, edited by Catherine de Zegher, MIT Press, 1996.
- Mignon Nixon, "The She-Fox". In: Women Artists at the Millennium. Edited by Carol Armstrong and Catherine de Zegher. October Books / MIT Press, 2006. ISBN 0-262-01226-x
- Mignon Nixon, Fantastic Reality: Louise Bourgeois and a Story of Modern Art, October Books / MIT Press, 2005, ISBN 0-262-140896
- Wallpaper, October 2008[1]
[edit] Video
[edit] External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Louise Bourgeois |
- Sculptor Louise Bourgeois: A year of events celebrating her life and work WSWS Arts Review
- Bourgeois' work and Jewish identity
- 2007 exhibition at Tate Modern, London
- 2008 exhibition at Pompidou Centre, Paris
- Dossier : Louise Bourgeois, Centre Pompidou
- 2008 retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY
- Elaine Showalter on Louise Bourgeois
- Biography, interviews, essays, artwork images and video clips from PBS series Art:21 -- Art in the Twenty-First Century - Season 2 (2003).
- Louise Bourgeois is represented by Xavier Hufkens
- Available Artwork at Gallery Paule Anglim
- Spider Photo of statue at Philadelphia Museum.
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