Louise Bourgeois @louise-bourgeois - Tumblr Blog

Louise Bourgeois, Femme-Maison, 1947, 1994

This series is very popular in the feminist movement. Women's figures with a house in place of the head is a direct statement about about women are traditionally expected to remain as domestic figures in the household. It also is a dialogue of the conflict between domestic and sexual roles for women. There is also a sense of the mind and body in the relationship between architecture and figure. It brings up the problem of identity among women as she is trapped in the house. As seen here, she has used this concept in both drawing and sculpture. She has many other works of women's figures with a house in place of a head in numerous other pieces as well.

Bourgeois, Louise, Femme-Maison, 1947, ink on paper, 9-15/16 x 7-1/8 in., Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

Bourgeois, Louise, Femme-Maison, 1994, Marble, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

http://arttattler.com/archivebourgeois.html

Louise Bourgeois, Mamelles, 1991

This piece is a very large scale wall sculpture, the first version in an edition of six. Based on the idea of a classical frieze, since it is very larger and runs laterally across the wall. Going along with Bourgeois' theme of the human body, this piece includes 16 breasts that are situated across its entirety. The breasts can be seen as their nurturing role in motherhood, and they also can be a reaction to how women's bodies are over sexualized and vulnerable. Bourgeois says it "portrays a man who ,lives off the women he courts, making his way fro one to the next. Feeding from them but returning nothing, he loves on in a consumptive and selfish manner." A Don Juan of sorts. It is critical of the all-consuming masculine desire and is considered a feminist piece.

Bourgeois, Louise, Mamelles, 1991. Rubber, fiberglass, and wood. 482 x 3408 x 482 mm. Tate Collection.

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/bourgeois-mamelles-t11916/text-summary

Louise Bourgeois exhibition at Tate Modern 10 October 2007 – 20 January 2008. I thought this was a very cool interactive site because it takes you though all the rooms to see which part of her collection is there and it gives a little narrative. What really drew my attention, though was the narrative provided with the work in room 2. Specifically, when it talks about (briefly) her life as a mother and how she lived in New York. Much of Louise Bourgeois' work and articles about her work focus on her childhood and her feelings towards her parents, which is why I was a bit shocked to find this. She lived with her husband and three children in an apartment in Manhattan and utilized the rooftop space as her outdoor studio. The two pieces shown and some of her personages pieces were made here and influenced by the tall buildings that surrounded her.

Janus Fleur, Louise Bourgeois, 1968

This piece, Janus Fleur by Louise Bourgeois, is a nod to sexuality. It appears as several reproductive organs placed together, both male and female, which links masculinity and femininity This is an example of one of Bourgeois' more blatantly sexual pieces. This is a piece that started the trend towards phallic representation in contemporary american art. Each of Louise Bourgeois' pieces has a relation to the practice of psychoanalysis. Interestingly, this piece hung in a Freud exhibition (shown in the second picture) and hung about the couch, a representation of how psychoanalysis had a presence in this art's history.

http://distortedarts.com/louise-bourgeois-the-return-of-the-repressed/

Bourgeois, Louise, Janus Fleur, 1968. Bronze. Freud Museum.

Louise Bourgeois was most famous for her spiders, but sex, rage and fear fuelled her greatest art. This article focuses on her influences and driving forces to create the art she made in her long lifetime. Sexuality plays a huge role in many of her pieces, it's a nod to everyone's vulnerability, shown in a lot of the phallic imagery or female anatomy that comes up in many of her sculptures. Much of the sexual images that appear in her work is also a reaction against the affairs her father had with people in Louise's life, which still torments her.

In this article are also direct quotes from Bourgeois on certain subjects.

Femme Volage (1951)- Louise Bourgeois

This is just one of about 80 wooden sculptures, or Personnages, Bourgeois carved. Many of these were representative of people in her whole life, some who are long gone and others that were present when she made them. Each was motivated by a desire to connect with love ones or stemmed from resentment of the family betrayal from her childhood. The placement of these personages was important, they were placed in small clustered but spread about the room, resembling people in conversation.

Femme Volage is a self described self portrait.

http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/artwork/643

Bourgeois, Louise, Femme Volage, 1951, Painted wood, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

Destruction of the Father (1974)- Louise Bourgeois

This is one of Bourgeois pieces which tells of her deep interest in psychoanalysis. This pieces really looks into her feelings of her father, it takes him apart and displays him for us here. He was very dominating but not trustworthy. The piece both resembles a bed and a table, both are places where she felt bad feelings of betrayal and suffering respectively. The view of this as a bed that is disgusting and corroded is influenced by her father cheating on her mother in their own bed. He is destroyed here by what he did in that bed. In viewing this as a table, Bourgeois is suggesting that she would eat her father because of her anger of what he did, but also to keep him close to her and prevent him from doing any other things that would betray their family. An all around gruesome and scandalous piece.

http://www.artslant.com/la/articles/show/2711

Bourgeois, Louise. "Destruction of the father," plaster, latex, wood, fabric, and red light, 1974. In Art Slant, by Shasha Bergstrom-Katz.

This article highlights an exhibition of Louise Bourgeois' hanging sculptures that is currently being shown at New York's Cheim & Read. These pieces span from though out her lifetime and are done in many different materials. They range in themes from feelings towards her father to gender and sexuality. The use of suspension dates back to her childhood through influences in her childhood home.

Louise Bourgeois' Prints- Video Clip

Moving away from her large scale, famous sculptures for a moment. This short video clip shows us numerous of her print works. This gallery exhibits 220 of them, all made in 1994 when she was experiencing insomnia. These prints could potentially give us a more telling view inside Bourgeois' mind. She incorporates some writing into her pieces as well, which renders her both a printmaker and a poet.

Louise Bourgeois- Tate Modern

This video introduces a retrospective exhibition of seven decades of Louise Bourgeois' work. It shares a short description of her early life and how she grew up in a culture of art, which influences her works today. The photos of her past may looking happy and nice but there was a lot of tension and heartbreak in her family history, which shows up as memories in her pieces. A few of her works in the exhibition are shown as well as a short interview of Louise, discussing her work.

A small article that highlights works done in fabric by Louise Bourgeois. Bourgeois has a strong link to fabric since her family trade was working with tapestry. She finds is symbolic of her way of trying to hold things together. This article explains the formation and evolution of her fabric works over time and discusses the themes that are seen in these pieces. (Also advertises an exhibition of these pieces).

An article written about Louise Bourgeois' life in depth. It discusses her earliest beginnings in art all the way up until she was 90 years old. Bourgeois is very open and willing to share many tough details about her past. A lot of her emotions of anger and fear come from her inconsistent and confusing childhood. In this article and in her art pieces she prominently displays many feelings and stories most people would be more than happy to keep to themselves. She states here that she got into doing art to cope with these kinds of problems, art became a type of therapy for here. She does not worry about who else saw because she used art to cope with her life, not just for other people to look at and enjoy.

For the last 30 years of her life, she interestingly opened "sunday salons" at her home where artists could bring in their work to be critiqued. This is where a lot of her personality was shown, since she was known to be pretty ruthless during these critiques. This article is a great view of the drama of Bourgeois life that is translated to her work. Also highlights her opinions and influences from the many decades she was alive.

Cell II (1991)- Louise Bourgeois

This is an installation piece made by Bourgeois in 1991. Of her multiple Cell pieces, this particular one is Cell II. The link at the bottom goes to an article that discusses in depth the background and the themes of this piece. She explains parts of Bourgeois' childhood that bring up emotions that she put into her piece. Specifically, feelings towards her mother and the traumatizing event of her father cheating on her mother are called up in this piece. The type of perfume bottles and their use in this piece are also discussed in this article:

http://girlwholikesboyswholikegirlswholikeperfumes.wordpress.com/2012/04/10/an-empty-bottle-of-shalimar-the-art-of-louise-bourgeois/

Louise Bourgeois, Cell II, 1991, Collection Cheim & Read, New York, Photograph from guggenheim.org

Video clip approximately 15 minutes long about Louise Bourgeois. A large portion of this video is her sharing her process of making some sculptures that will be placed outside in honor of the Jane Adams Memorial Park. She explains why she chose to design the sculptures and she talk a little bit about her process of actually making them. She talks very briefly about her family history and how her family influenced and affected her to end up where she is today. This video also shows some up close views of some of Bourgeois' other works and some quotes about her influences for her art pieces.

Maman (1999)- Louise Bourgeois

This large 30 ft high sculpture is one of Bourgeois' most well known. Titled Maman, it was created in 1999 and is made of mostly bronze and steel with marble eggs inside. There have been several casts made of this sculpture and are placed in various places around the world.

This sculpture was made as a portrait, or ode to her mother. She was very fond of her and has said she was her best friend. She finds qualities of spiders similar to those of her mother, such as weaving (her mother worked on tapestries), nurturing, and protectiveness. These were all qualities she loved about her mother and conveyed through this sculpture, Maman.

http://michaelbruneau.blogspot.com/2011/01/home-to-maman.html

Bourgeois, Louise. Maman, bronze, stainless steel and marble.

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Louise Bourgeois