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Louise BourgeoisAmerican sculptor, painter and graphic artist of French origin
Country:
 USA |
Louise Bourgeois: Biography
Louise Bourgeois was an American sculptor, painter, and printmaker of French descent. She was born on December 25, 1911, and grew up in the French province, using her emerging artistic abilities to assist in her family's wallpaper restoration business. During these early years, Bourgeois witnessed her father's infidelity with an English governess who lived with them. These events, along with the death of her mother in 1932 and complicated relationship with her father, left deep emotional wounds that Bourgeois sought to heal through her art. The diaries she kept from 1923 reveal her feelings of anger, guilt, and fear. Bourgeois' richly symbolic art cannot be separated from her life story.
In 1932, Bourgeois enrolled at the Sorbonne, where she studied mathematics. The same year, she visited the Soviet Union. She began studying art in 1936. In 1938, she married American art historian Robert Goldwater, an expert in primitive art who became the first director of the Museum of Primitive Art in New York in 1957. In 1939, Bourgeois and her husband moved to New York, where she lived and worked until her death. In 1947, Bourgeois created her first vertical wooden sculpture, and her first sculpture exhibition took place in 1949. In 1951, her father passed away, and Bourgeois obtained American citizenship. Starting from 1960, she began teaching regularly and became involved in the feminist movement in 1966. In 1967, Bourgeois started using marble and bronze in her sculptures. She made regular visits to Italy from 1972 onwards. In 1973, her husband Robert Goldwater passed away. In 1977, Bourgeois received an honorary doctorate in fine arts from Yale University. In 1980, she purchased a large studio in Brooklyn. In 1982, her first retrospective exhibition took place at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1985, her first solo exhibition in France was held. In 1992, Bourgeois presented her first sculptural environment, and in 1993, she represented the United States at the Venice Biennale. From 2001 to 2002, an exhibition of Bourgeois' works (sculptures, objects, and lithographs) took place at the Hermitage Museum.
On May 31, 2010, Bourgeois passed away in New York at the age of 98. Louise Bourgeois' work is often referred to as an encyclopedia of contemporary art since it encompasses all major movements of the twentieth century, including Cubism, Futurism, Surrealism, Constructivism, and Abstraction. Her works, which range from abstract to figurative, realistic to phantasmagoric, are created using various materials such as wood, marble, bronze, plaster, latex, and fabric.
At the beginning of her career, Bourgeois focused on graphic art and painting. The post-war situation is reflected in a series of memorable works shown at her first solo exhibition. In the series "Femme Maison" (1945-1947) and "Fallen Women (Femme Maison)" (1946-1947), Bourgeois used surrealist techniques, combining different objects: the female body and house-like structures. These works testify to the role of the artist as a pioneer of the generation of women who broke many barriers in the male-dominated art circles of that time. Furthermore, on a deeper level, these works expressed a sense of disillusionment and helplessness in the face of the devastating threat of fascism and war.
In the 1940s, Bourgeois shifted her focus to sculpture, for which she is now recognized as one of the leading masters of the twentieth century. She was significantly influenced by the influx of European surrealist artists who immigrated to the United States after World War II. In her early sculptures, Bourgeois worked with abstract and organic forms, often carved from wood. In the 1960s, she began incorporating latex, bronze, and stone into her art, and her sculptures became larger, reflecting her recurring theme of childhood trauma.
In the late 1960s, the post-war boom ended, and Bourgeois witnessed a new wave of revolutionary struggle (1968-1975) and the collapse of several dictatorships. She was unprepared for this new period and turned to identity politics. Distancing herself from socialism and left-wing ideas during the post-war period in America and the Cold War, Bourgeois embraced an "alternative" politics rooted in gender issues. Typical works from this period include "Sleep II" (1967) and "Fillette" (1968), which represent interpretations of male genitals.
One of the most significant works of this period is the installation "Destruction of the Father" (1974), which resembles a cave-like structure with stone-like figures surrounding a sacrificial slab, scattered with body parts (including pieces of a real lamb purchased from a butcher). This haunting work is reminiscent of the art of one of Bourgeois' favorite artists, Spanish painter Francisco Goya.
In 1982, Bourgeois wrote an essay for Artforum titled "Child Abuse," in which she defined her artistic concepts almost entirely within the framework of childhood trauma. An illustration of this period is the marble sculpture "Femme Maison" (1983) - a seated female figure with a head resembling a house. In "Femme Maison" created in 1994, a female figure lies on her back without arms, her head fused with a house that has a small door.
In the 1980s, Bourgeois' art gained increasing attention. On one hand, various academic circles welcomed her for her existentialism and feminism. On the other hand, young artists were interested in her life and work due to her creative independence, use of various styles, references to art history, and sensitivity to social issues.
The 1990s marked a new period in Bourgeois' art - "cells." One of her goals was to create a self-contained environment independent of the museum setting that one could enter. These constructions represent a kind of isolation of past experiences. The title of the work "Dangerous Passageway" speaks for itself. A long passage resembling a prison runs alongside chambers with images from the past and torture devices. In "Cell (Choisy)" (1990-1993), the cell contains a marble sculpture of a house placed under a large guillotine, reminiscent of a scene from a nightmare.
Bourgeois' later works (late 1990s onwards) include a series of fabric heads and figures depicting various stages of pain and despair. For example, in "Couple IV" (1997), what appears to be an old-fashioned display from a provincial museum showcases two headless fabric figures attempting to engage in intercourse.
Louise Bourgeois created her unique symbolic vocabulary, in which personal experiences and fantasies are concretized into expressive images. For example, the use of spiders is not a sign of arachnophobia but represents an enveloping and patient mother figure. Similarly, sewing needles are not aggressive symbols but are used to denote the mending of losses. Houses are portrayed not as shelters but as chambers or cages where the danger of losing oneself is present.
Bourgeois' "Spiders" gained widespread recognition - giant metal sculptures of spiders. In 1999, she received the Golden Lion at the 48th Venice Biennale. She was awarded the Wolf Prize in Arts in 2002/3 and the Japan Imperial Award in 1999.
