Louise Bourgeois

uSpider, 1996
Washington National Gallery of Art, Sculpture Garden

I knew Louise Bourgeois from only one art work, a huge Spider in the Sculpture Garden of the Washington National Gallery. I didn't know what did this sculpture mean: was she imagining a frightening bestiarium with enormous insects in control of the world? Was it about human fragility, was it about cosmic dreads?

I found the response while visiting a retrospective of her work, at Hirshhorn. At the entrance of the museum from Independence Avenue, another Spider, this one brought here from Ottawa, from the National Gallery of Canada.

Spider

The retrospective had traveled from Paris to London to New York (where it was hosted at Guggenheim).

Untitled, 2004
as it was exposed at Guggenheim

I was at Hirshhorn some time in February or March, when they were installing the retrospective, and the whole third floor was closed for the preparations. I came back to visit exactly this last Sunday, to find out that it was the last day! So I was fortunate in the end.

Personages from the 1940s
carved from construction wood found on Manhattan streets

The work of Louise Bourgeois is amazing. That's the first to say: amazing!

First of all by vitality. She is still creating, at 96! Impressive works, full of force, impregnated with her strong personality.

I was in the Hell and I Came Back,
and Let Me Tell You,
It was Beautiful There!

The experience of a whole life, and in the same time, the courage to explore in her late nineties new roads in art. She started under the influence of Surrealists, she traversed all kind of Abstract flavors, to discover in the twenty first century the Hyper-Realism. She began with painting, she switched to sculpture, using firstly wood collected from Manhattan streets, she adhered for a while in the camp of Installation Art, she used marble and wood in her sculpture, she is now using fabric: look at that Head made by her in 2001, it looks like bronze, it's just fabric! I am sorry the photo is not well done, to catch the extraordinary expression on that face. It looks like an old Chinese wise man.

Symbols of Sexuality, Symbols of Aggressiveness

Now, here is a second explanation why she is so amazing: her work is a living history of all currents in contemporary art, while she remained always herself. Louise Bourgeois is a very stubborn artist who kept her distances very carefully and stitched to her own guns. She was always interested to express her own universe, nothing else. All she created is about herself, about her family, about her obsessions, her fears.

Lair, 1963

And here comes the third explanation why her work is amazing: the way she expresses herself.

She speaks in all her works about the memories of her childhood, her complex relationship with her mother, her feelings for her father.

Lair
is it a pyramid or a Mexican hat or just an ice cream?

Such a stubbornness in remaining within her childhood memories would have been unfortunate for someone else. She managed to find the universal in her obsessions, to find cosmic symbols for her intimate memories: look at this nightmarish Destruction of the Father, he is there chopped on the table, surrounded by his rebelled kids!

The Destruction of the Father, 1974

Everything in her work is her own: the way she approached the various artistic currents (look at that Red Cell: her way to do Installation Art; or look at the Femme-Maison, a recurring motive in her work; or look at the phallic symbols, another recurring motive with contradictory meanings: desire of vitality, fear of brutality).

Red Cell

Femme-Maison

It is a lot to say about Louise Bourgeois, I'll leave you in the company of Natalie Darbeloff, who visited the retrospective at London, at the Tate Modern. Then read the chronicle published by NY Times (I found there most of the images).

Arch of Hysteria, 1993

Rejection, 2001
fabric and wood on stainless steel

I would add only one more word: for Louise Bourgeois the Spider is not a frightening symbol, as I believed in the beginning: on the contrary it is protective, and it keeps you in its worm inside, like in a womb; it is the symbol of Mother.

Spider Couple, 2003

(Hirshhorn Museum)