Louise Bourgeois

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Maman in front of the National Gallery of Canada

Louise Joséphine Bourgeois (born December 25, 1911 in Paris , † May 31, 2010 in New York City ) was a French-American artist. She is best known as a sculptor who dealt with installations very early on . She also created paintings and graphics. Topics that she dealt with several times are female and male gender, the relationship between security and dependency, the unconscious and death. Spiders, cells and phalluses appear as recurring motifs in her work. Bourgeois lived and worked in New York City since 1938.

Life

Louise Bourgeois grew up in Choisy-le Roi near Paris, where her family ran a gallery for historical textiles. The family also had a workshop there for restoring old fabrics. As a child, Bourgeois made drawings in his parents' workshop to fill in missing parts. In Paris from 1936 to 1938, among other things at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris , she acquired the basic knowledge and skills necessary for her work as a sculptor. Since she was a girl, very little attention was paid to her in her childhood, which she later commented as follows:

“When a boy is born, the family is happy. When a girl is born, you come to terms with it, you tolerate the fact. "

- 3sat - culture time

Louise had a very tense relationship with her father Louis. He cheated on her mother Joséphine Bourgeois for ten years in her own house with the English nanny Sadie Gordon Richmond, who taught Louise the English language. The father also showed very little consideration for Louise, made fun of her and exposed her at the dining table. In order to distract herself, she began to make her first sculptures out of bread, depicting her father, which she then secretly destroyed at the dining table. She expressed this in an interview as follows:

“My father talked all the time. I never had a chance to say anything. That's when I started making little things out of bread. If someone is always talking and what the person says hurts a lot, then this can become so distracting. You focus on doing something with your fingers. These figures were my first sculptures and they represent an escape from something I didn't want to hear. [...] It was an escape from my father. I have done a lot of work on the subject of 'The Destruction of the Father'. I do not forgive and I do not forget. That is the motto that feeds my work. "

- 3sat - culture time

She described her school as a place of refuge where she was very happy and isolated from her home. In the same way, her mother offered her a place of refuge from her father. Hence, Bourgeois described her mother as the best friend of her childhood. In her works of art she is often symbolized by a spider, since she was a weaver. Bourgeois does not feel disgust in this comparison, however, but sees the spider as a well-meaning guardian. When her mother was dying, Louise Bourgeois took care of her. After her death in 1932, Bourgeois attempted suicide .

Around the same time, Louise Bourgeois began studying mathematics at the Sorbonne in Paris . A few years later, however, she switched to art and art history. She attended public and private art schools in Paris: the École des beaux-arts , the Académie de la grande chaumière , the École du Louvre and the studio of Fernand Léger , who is said to have encouraged her to work as a sculptor .

The memories and traumatic experiences of her childhood and youth influenced her life and work and led to works of art such as the room installations "The Destruction of the Father" and "The Reticent Child". Her art thus represents a coming to terms with her childhood, which she herself describes as a privilege to sublimate . In 1938 she went to New York with her husband Robert Goldwater , who accepted a teaching position as an art historian there while she continued her art studies at the Art Students League . In 1939 they both returned to Paris for a short time to adopt their first son, Michel, in 1940. In 1940 she gave birth to her son Jean-Louis and in 1941 to Alain.

Her apartment, or more precisely her library room , in the Chelsea district of New York became an every Sunday salon for many years in 1996 for registered artists from all disciplines from all over the world who wanted to give samples of their work. Louise Bourgeois died in Chelsea at the age of 98.

plant

Louise Bourgeois has dealt with a wide variety of materials and techniques in the course of her artistic work. In doing so, she takes on a pioneering role in some areas: She is one of the first artists to work as installations, arranging her sculptures as coherent parts in a spatial context. Her willingness to experiment repeatedly leads her to new processing options and material combinations. For example, in some of the fabric figures that have been created since the mid-1990s, the processed items of clothing from childhood and youth serve as filling and wrapping - they are material and theme, content and form. A late work is the transformation of the former recollect monastery Le Couvent d'Ô in Bonnieux , France, into a small museum, the Église Louise Bourgeois , into which she has integrated her own work. In addition to and in close proximity to Peter Zumthor's witch memorial in Vardø, Norway , the artist designed a pavilion - a memorial dealing with the issues of aggression and the finality of the cremation, and a homage to the 91 documented victims.

In the 1940s, Bourgeois was working with color on paper. In these works there are already elements that later determined her work on a larger scale. The spider was already underneath. With Bourgeois this animal always has a positive connotation and stands for her mother, who worked with threads on the tapestries and had a protective effect for the child. The spider (mother) became a friend, with diverse skills and indispensable.

In the 1980s he first created statues, then installations that already referred to the next phase of her work. From 1991 onwards she called her installations Cells . She initially created enclosed spaces in the dimensions of small rooms from reused elements, including screens or doors from a demolished New York judicial building. In these rooms she placed objects and objects with an autobiographical meaning. She later had wire mesh cages made in which to set up her installations. Until shortly before her death, Bourgeois created 60 cells.

The objects that recur again and again in the cells include wooden balls that symbolize people for them, spiders made of wire and metal that again represent their mother, and amorphous structures of different materials and colors hanging on threads with which Bourgeois himself as a part of the work represented. At the beginning and at the end of the Cells there are stairs, a wooden one in No Exit from 1988, which she later saw as another work before 1991 as the first Cells, and The Last Climb (2008) with a spiral staircase from her own studio building.

In the second half of the 1990s, Bourgeois created their mamans , gigantic spider figures .

Exhibitions

The international art scene only became aware of Louise Bourgeois late, whose works initially only attracted attention in the United States, especially in New York. There her drawings (1945) and the sculptures created between 1941 and 1953 (1979) were shown to the public for the first time in solo exhibitions. In 1980 the exhibition of her sculptures from the years 1955 to 1970 followed. After the New York Museum of Modern Art had dedicated a retrospective to Louise Bourgeois in 1982, other American museums followed. From 1989 onwards, her works could also be seen in various European countries. In 1990 the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in Munich showed a traveling exhibition that was produced in cooperation with the Frankfurter Kunstverein.

The Japan Art Association recognized Louise Bourgeois' life's work in 1999 with the award of the Praemium Imperiale , the most important prize for contemporary art . At the Kunstkompass 2005 she took fifth place, in 2009 she was thirteenth place, the most successful woman in the ranking.

Louise Bourgeois aroused international interest with her participation in documenta IX in Kassel (1992) and the Venice Biennale (1993). In 1994 the Kestnergesellschaft in Hanover showed the work of the American sculptor. In 1996 the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg dedicated a large retrospective to their work. In the spring of 1999 the exhibition Spiders, Loners, Couples took place in the Kunsthalle Bielefeld . Her works were shown at the Melbourne International Biennial 1999 , Documenta 11 (2002), as well as in exhibitions in Berlin ( Akademie der Künste , 2003), Dublin ( Irish Museum of Modern Art , 2003/04), Augsburg ( Neue Galerie im Höhmannhaus , 2005), Kunsthalle Bielefeld (2006), Kunsthalle Wien (2006), and Philadelphia Museum of Art .

In 2007, Tate Modern dedicated an extensive retrospective to the artist in London at the same time as her 95th birthday. From March 5 to June 2, 2008, the Center Georges Pompidou in Paris exhibited some of her works. Further exhibitions: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York) and Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles) . Louise Bourgeois accompanied the last exhibition opened during her lifetime in Germany in the Scharf-Gerstenberg Collection ( National Gallery ) in Berlin, " Double Sexus . Bellmer - Bourgeois" (April 24 to August 25, 2010). From September 3, 2011 to January 8, 2012, on the occasion of her 100th birthday, the exhibition À L'Infini took place at the Fondation Beyeler , Riehen . - An exhibition was on view in the Kunsthalle Hamburg until June 17, 2012.

The Munich House of Art put together a touring exhibition of 32 of their 60 cells , which was on view in Munich from February to August 2015 and the city then moved towards the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (from March 18, 2016 to September 4, 2016) and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark.

Mom

Her 9 meter high bronze spider figures, the " Maman ", can be found in the public collections: Mori Art Museum, Roppongi , Tokyo, Japan; Leeum, Samsung Museum of Modern Art , Seoul , South Korea; Hermitage , Saint Petersburg , Russia; Tuileries Garden , Paris , France; Tate Modern , London , Great Britain; Guggenheim Museum , Bilbao , Spain; Institute of Contemporary Art , Boston , USA; National Gallery of Canada , Ottawa , Canada; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden , Washington, DC , USA; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes , Palacio del Centro Asturiano, Havana , Cuba; John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park , Des Moines , USA; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art , Kansas City , Missouri, USA.

One of the spiders has been traveling through Switzerland since May 2011 in the run-up to an exhibition on the 100th birthday of the Fondation Beyeler artist . She could be seen on the Bundesplatz in Bern until June 7th , after which she moved on to Zurich and Geneva. From September 3, 2011 to January 8, 2012 it was at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel .

Photo gallery locations of the Maman sculpture (selection)

  • Maman in London 2007

  • On the Bürkliplatz in Zurich

  • In front of the Musée des beaux-arts du Canada in Ottawa

  • In Ottawa

  • In front of the art gallery in Hamburg

  • In front of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao

  • A bird's eye view of Bilbao

  • Night view in Bilbao

  • On the Bundesplatz in Bern

  • In front of the Palacio de Correos in Mexico

  • In front of the Torrelatino in Mexico

  • In the Fondation Beyeler, Riehen near Basel

Awards

literature

  • Jean Frémon (Ed.): Louise Bourgeois: Moi, Eugénie Grandet. (= Not so small library. Number 7). Piet Meyer Verlag, Bern / Vienna 2013.
  • Julienne Lorz: Louise Bourgeois: Structures of Existence: The Cells. Catalog for the exhibition in the Haus der Kunst. Prestel Verlag , Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-7913-5406-4 .
  • Ulf Küster : Louise Bourgeois. Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern 2011.
  • Donald Kuspit: A conversation with Louise Bourgeois. (= Not so small library. Number 3). Piet Meyer Verlag , Bern / Vienna 2011.
  • Emilie Kiefhaber: Louise Bourgeois: The "Cells" of the nineties. Thesis. Faculty of History and Cultural Studies at the University of Vienna, 2010. ( othes.univie.ac.at online )
  • Hans Ulrich Obrist and Marie-Laure Bernadac (eds.): Louise Bourgeois. Destruction of the father, reconstruction of the father. Writings and interviews 1923-2000 , Ammann Verlag, Zurich 2001, ISBN 3-250-10430-2 .

Web links

Commons : Louise Bourgeois  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: Louise Bourgeois  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Louise Bourgeois Kulturzeit extra: a portrait , 3sat.de, December 28, 2005
  2. ↑ Louise Bourgeois - Video on Youtube (French)
  3. ↑ Everything is possible in New York Kulturzeit extra : Louise Bourgeois - a portrait; Part 2. 3sat.de
  4. ↑ Andrea Schweers: Louise Bourgeois. In: FemBio - Women Biography Research. Retrieved June 18, 2018 .
  5. ↑ Rachel Cooke: She'll put a spell on you. In: The Guardian. October 14, 2007. (English)
  6. ↑ artcritical.com (English)
  7. ↑ a b Elke von Radziewsky: The old lady as a torturer . In: The time . No. 38, 1994. "The Kestner Society in Hanover is showing the work of the American sculptor Louise Bourgeois."
  8. ^ Kunsthalle Bielefeld: biography
  9. ↑ Lisa Zeitz: She is the queen bee. Louise Bourgeois is an artist based in Chelsea, New York. The salon is open to invited guests on Sundays . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung . No. 32 , August 10, 2003, Art Market, p. 50 .
  10. ^ Tate Modern: Work of the week: Maman by Louise Bourgeois , March 4, 2013.
  11. ↑ Private Chambers of Wonder. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. June 8, 2015.
  12. ^ Tate Modern: Louise Bourgeois Maman 1999
  13. ↑ Irene Netta, Ursula Keltz: 75 years of the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus and Kunstbau Munich . Ed .: Helmut Friedel. Self-published by the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-88645-157-7 , p. 222 .
  14. ↑  ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Art Compass 09: The most important artists . In: Courier . May 29, 2009.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.kurier.at
  15. ↑ Johannes Vesper: Review on musenblaetter.de , August 2, 2010 on: Udo Kittelmann, Kyllikki Zacharias (ed.): Hans Bellmer - Louise Bourgeois. Distance-Verlag, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-89955-403-8 .
  16. ^ Louise Bourgeois: À L'Infini. Exhibition at Fondation Beyeler.
  17. ↑ hamburger-kunsthalle.de ( Memento of the original from March 7, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.hamburger-kunsthalle.de
  18. ^ Announcement on the exhibition , accessed on March 1, 2015.
  19. ^ Catrin Lorch: Forced residence. The artist Louise Bourgeois died five years ago, almost a hundred years old. Now her 'cells' are unfolding in the monumental Haus der Kunst in Munich on a subversive scale. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . No. 49, February 28 / March 1, 2015, ISSN  0174-4917 , p. 18.
  20. ↑ Images of the great Maman , spider mother
  21. ^ Members: Louise Bourgeois. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed February 17, 2019 .
  22. ↑ nationalacademy.org: Past Academicians "B" / Bourgeois, Louise NA 1994 ( Memento of the original from August 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on June 15, 2015) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.nationalacademy.org
personal data
SURNAME Bourgeois, Louise
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bourgeois, Louise Joséphine (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French-American sculptor and painter
BIRTH DATE December 25, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH May 31, 2010
PLACE OF DEATH New York City