The family firm restores and sells mediaeval and renaissance tapestries and antiquities. After graduating from school, Bourgeois begins studying spatial geometry and differential calculus at the Sorbonne. Gives up mathematics and begins studying art. Over the next few years she studies under various artists in Montparnasse and Montmartre. She also works as a guide at the Louvre. Focuses initially on painting and drawings. A few months later, Bourgeois gives birth to Jean-Louis, followed by Alain the year after.
They move to an apartment in the Stuyvesant Building. Makes wood sculptures on the roof. Takes up sculpture in the mid s. Suffers from insomnia and discovers the therapeutic effects of drawing. Bourgeois suffers from depression and starts psychoanalysis in autumn , continuing until Teaches art at several schools. Moves to West 20th Street, where she lives until her death. This is also the year she marries the art historian Robert Goldwater and moves with him to New York. Untitled The Wedges Photo www.
The artist in New York. The dawn of sculpture. Now in New York, Bourgeois wastes no time enrolling at the Art Students League and becomes interested in engraving, a technique that would remain in her repertoire til the end of her life.
During this time, she researches tri-dimensionality in art and by the mid 's has created her first series of wood sculptures, totem poles of highly stylised yet disturbing shapes. These are the years when Abstract Impessionism reigned supreme and Bourgeois exhibits alongside its prime movers such as Rothko, de Kooning and Pollock.
Nevertheless, her work keeps its distance from the accepted strictures of abstractionism and rather portrays a universe that is far more carnal, explicit and perplexing. Bourgeois' imagination was to remain always on the periphery of schools and tendencies, transcending them with a body of work that was intimate and beguiling.
Following her father's sudden death in , Bourgeois again suffers a deep depression during which she begins to develop her all-encompassing installations that spoke intimately of her memories, lived experiences and traumas. This is also when she starts to attend sessions with a psychoanalyst, coinciding with a period of self-imposed seclusion.
In , she comes out of isolation and organises her first solo exhibition for 11 years in which she showcases her latest work both plastic and organic and, for the first time, includes the concept of "lairs", the precursor to her subsequent and spell-binding "Cells".
Destruction and confrontation: facing up to life. The destruction of the father Bourgeois's artistic trajectory would appear to broaden and flourish from onwards. After her husband's death, she decides to take advantage of the pain and resentment she had been harbouring to create works that bare her all, literally. This is the case with " The destruction of the father" , an impactful installation that seems to show the insides of a vital organ whilst at the same time mimicking a sinister dinner party.
The setting, with deliberately arranged organic shapes bathed in red light, is the essence of depredation and even "digestion". It is a direct confrontation with her memory of the relationship she had with a father who forced his family to live with his lover Sadie, the tutor much loved by Bourgeois, and even tried to marry Louise off to one of his friends, something which led to her first suicide attempt. It transformed me, really. Lairs, cells and spiders. A return from the subconscious.
The years of psychoanalysis undertaken by Bourgeois can be seen reflected in much of her output but it is only after that she starts to create specific pieces, namely "The Cells", to expose the essence of her relationship with social contracts, her lived experiences and the subconscious.
These were enclosed installations, each telling its own story and communicating that experience to the minds of whoever enters in. The original one, "Arti culated Lair" , was to be the first in a series of some 60 works created using theatrical elements, staging, interactive spaces and, as ever, the presence of emotions.
Bourgeois created these scene-settings to connect her work with certain traumatic life events, using them for liberation from them. When the spectator enters inside and experiences the artist's subconscious world, they too come to share her nightmares.
In the mid s, Bourgeois begins to explore another of her obsessions, namely the spider as mother, predator and weaver. Reverting back to her childhood references spiders and the sick but protective mother , and by now in her eighties, Bourgeois begins to sculpt designs in the form of spiders that are equally terrible and fragile, both victim and destructive force.
For her, the spider represented "intelligence, productivity and protection. If you bash into the web of a spider, she doesn't get mad. For many years Louise Bourgeois conducted a monthly salon from her house in New York. It was a chance to …. Main menu additional Become a Member Shop.
In Tate Liverpool. In Tate Modern. In the Studio: International Surrealism Free. In Tate St Ives. See all artworks on display.
Read full Wikipedia entry. Abject art Feminist art. Artworks Left Right. Sorry, no image available. Louise Bourgeois Abandoned Louise Bourgeois Extreme Tension Louise Bourgeois Sangsue Louise Bourgeois The Nest Louise Bourgeois I See You!!!
Louise Bourgeois The Prey of Anxiety See all Artist as subject.
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