Louise Bourgeois, IN AND OUT, 1995 (detail)
Metal, glass, plaster, fabric and plastic Cell: 205.7 x 210.8 x 210.8 cm, Plastic: 195 x 170 x 290 cm, collection The Easton Foundation, photo: Christopher Burke, copyright The Easton Foundation / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2015
Having approached a myriad of materials and techniques across several decades Louise Bourgeois (1911 – 2010) always kept impeccable consistency in form, and most of all by effortlessly coalescing matter and subject. She was a pioneer in bringing feminism and psychoanalysis into art. Her artworks are emotional while being a nalytical, personal without being insular, dark but with a tender side.
From the late 80s for about twenty years the artist would create sixty seminal architectural installations which she named “Cells”. More than thirty of those Cells are on show from February 27 at Haus der Kunst in Munich, for the first time since 1991. The curator Julienne Lorz took a holistic approach and had the consideration of connecting all the points by mustering not only the Cells but also some of the pinnacle artworks which lead to their creation. Some of those were paintings from the “Femme Maison” series in the 40s, which show the artist’s preoccupation with the body and architecture, and its continuation as marble or fabric sculptures in the 80s. Concluding the exhibition are the Giacometti-influenced “Personage” sculptures from the late 40s and the “I Give Everything Away”, (2010) drawings, the artist’s very last works.
Louise Bourgeois, CELL XXVI, 2003 (detail), Steel, fabric, aluminum, stainless steel and wood
252.7 x 434.3 x 304.8 cm, collection Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, The Netherlands, photo: Christopher Burke, copyright The Easton Foundation / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2015
Okwui Enwezor, the institution’s director made clear they don’t show retrospectives. But looking at the “Cells” as a whole one can see the entire history of Bourgeois’s oeuvre and life: plastic, wood, glass; sculpture, found objects, paintings, drawings; phalluses, breast-like bulges, spiders, text; pain, trauma, childhood, womanhood, love, hate. The “Cells” are a culmination of Bourgeois’s influences, practices and themes. Conceptually they are theatrical interpretations of her sculptures and paintings; they turn life inside out.
In 1980 at the age of 69 Louise Bourgeois moved from her tiny home studio in Manhattan to her first large and solo studio in Brooklyn. This drastic upgrade was the catalyst that lead the artist to start producing larger-than-life artworks. And while physically moving into a larger space, thematically she also moved deeper into a new space, her interior, her psychological space. The “Cells” are spaces where she analysed her pain, memory, anxiety, the fear of abandonment, as a cathartic process. But they can be more than that. “When I began building the “Cells” I wanted to create my own architecture, and not depend on the museum space,” said the artist in 1998, so in a way the Cells are museums themselves. “The ‘Cells’ represent different types of pain: the physical, the emotional and psychological, and the mental and intellectual. When does the emotional become physical? When does the physical become emotional?”
Louise Bourgeois, CELL (YOU BETTER GROW UP), 1993 (detail), Steel, glass, marble, ceramic, wood and mirror, 210.8 x 208.3 x 212.1 cm, The Rachofsky Collection, Dallas, photo: Peter Bellamy, copyright The Easton Foundation / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2015
Bourgeois’s “Cells”. much like the rest of her work, were purely autobiographical. “Red Room (Child)”, (1994) examines her longing for security as a child, and “Red Room (Parents)”, (1994) delves into her parents’ sexuality. While the “Spider”, (1997), represents her mother as a protecting and nurturing entity. But the magic of it is that its concepts surpass her personal experiences – she was a comprehensive artist. She brought together themes with her sculptures and objects from her surroundings. She gave rough (masculine) materials biomorphic (feminine) shapes. The “Articulated Lair”, (1986) consists of a row of black and white panels, which used to be the shelves she found in her studio, hinged at the edges that allow for different configurations. Inside there’s a small black stool fit for a child and hanging against the walls are ominous black rubber biomorphic shapes reminiscent of body parts. This Cell has a wide entrance, which is alluring and welcomes meditation but the hopefulness of it is that it also has an exit at the back, indicating that one never gets trapped in thoughts or pain. “ART IS A GUARANTEE OF SANITY” reads at the top of “Precious Liquids”, (1992) a Cell composed of a huge water tank that was above her studio and she filled it with references to body fluids: hanging glass in the shape of water drops, they stand for the tears, blood, sweat and urine associated to a girl going through the rites of passage. In the corner a black suit above two black spheres make a priapic reference to a male gaze. Bourgeois did here what she did best: she connected all the elements pertaining to the subject matter to her physical and emotional environments, rather organically. Bourgeois was heavily influenced by Surrealism (after all she was a friend of Duchamp’s) yet her Cells managed to cement her place as one the few artists who were considered both modern and contemporary.
“The Cells deal with her five senses,” explained her life-long assistant Jerry Gorovoy who often speaks as if Bourgeois stood right next to him. “She talked about her work in a way I have never heard an artist talk. Between her art and her life there’s no dividing line.”
Over time the Cells have become highly influential for subsequent artists both male and female: Ethan Hayes-Chute and Katrin Sigurdardottir to name a few. Moreover, an irrefutable strength in Louise Bourgeois is her depiction of emotions that are elementary, transcending gender, and that’s is exactly what makes her work universal and timeless.
Text by Will Furtado
Louise Bourgeois. Structures of Existence: The Cells exhibition runs until 2 August 2015 at Haus der Kunst, Munich
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