Louise Bourgeois
Louise Bourgeois
1911 — 2010
France, États-Unis
Franco-American sculptor
Émotions disponibles (6)
Neutre
par défaut
Inspirée
Pensive
Surprise
Triste
Fière
Key Facts
Works & Achievements
Series of vertical wooden sculptures evoking solitary human silhouettes, exhibited as early as 1949 at MoMA. Each figure represents a loved one who remained in France after her emigration.
Installation in latex, plaster and bone, depicting a fantasy scene in which the children devour the tyrannical father. A pivotal work in her career, combining symbolic violence and psychoanalysis.
Series of drawings and prints depicting a woman whose head is replaced by a house. A feminist icon ahead of its time, it illustrates the domestic confinement imposed on women.
Enclosed environments of metal and glass containing personal objects, sculptures and body fragments. Each 'cell' explores a form of pain or encapsulated memory.
Monumental spider in bronze, steel and marble, standing 9.27 meters tall. Created for the Tate Modern, it pays tribute to the artist's weaver mother and has become one of the most celebrated sculptures of the 20th century.
The first large bronze spider in the series, preceding 'Maman'. It condenses the maternal symbolism and the ambivalence between protection and threat that runs throughout Bourgeois's work.
Installation of three steel towers presented at the Tate Modern, inviting the public to climb and cross paths. It embodies the perpetual cycle of creation, destruction and reconstruction that defines Bourgeois's approach.
Anecdotes
Louise Bourgeois was born in Paris in 1911 into a family of tapestry restorers. Her mother, Joséphine, was a weaver and represented for Louise a figure of gentleness and resilience. When her mother died as Louise was 21, this bereavement would shape her entire future body of work.
Her father, Louis Bourgeois, maintained a ten-year affair with the family's English governess, Sadie Gordon Richmond, who lived under the same roof. Louise experienced this betrayal as a deep humiliation: she made it the secret driving force behind sculptures such as 'The Destruction of the Father' (1974), a monument to rage and symbolic revenge.
After settling in New York following her marriage to art historian Robert Goldwater in 1938, Louise Bourgeois remained largely overlooked by the art market for years. Her first major retrospective at MoMA did not come until 1982, when she was 71. She thus became one of the most celebrated artists in the world at an age when many people retire.
The sculpture 'Maman' (1999), a monumental bronze and steel spider standing over nine metres tall, was created for the inauguration of Tate Modern in London. For Louise Bourgeois, the spider symbolised her mother: a skilled weaver, protective, patient, and formidable all at once. Casts of 'Maman' are now installed outside several major museums around the world.
From the 1950s onwards, Louise Bourgeois held 'Sunday Sessions' in her New York studio: weekly gatherings where artists, critics, and friends freely debated art and psychoanalysis. She herself underwent psychoanalysis for more than twenty years and regarded her intimate journals as a work in their own right, published in 1994 under the title 'Destruction of the Father / Reconstruction of the Father'.
Primary Sources
I am alone, I am always alone. My work is there to protect me. It represents the fear I have of losing control.
Art is a guaranty of sanity. That is the most important thing I have said.
My work grows from the duel between the isolated individual and the shared awareness of the group.
Sculpture is a body. It has a nervous system, moods, feelings. It can look unwell. It changes from day to day.
The Cells represent different types of pain: the physical, the emotional and psychological, and the mental and intellectual. The fear of pain is the fear of vulnerability.
Key Places
Town where Louise Bourgeois grew up, in her family's tapestry restoration workshop. This artisanal environment shaped her relationship with materials and craftsmanship.
Louise Bourgeois's studio and residence for decades, home to her legendary 'Sunday Sessions' and the creation of nearly all of her American work.
Venue of her landmark 1982 retrospective, which brought her work international recognition at the age of 71 and changed the art world's perception of this long-overlooked artist.
Museum inaugurated in 2000 with Bourgeois's installation 'Maman' in the Turbine Hall. This monumental spider has become one of the iconic images of contemporary art.
Where Louise Bourgeois received her training in the 1930s, before also studying with Fernand Léger and Wassily Kandinsky at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière.
Typical Objects
A recurring symbol in Bourgeois's work, referencing her parents' tapestry restoration workshop. The needle and thread represent repair, the stitching of psychological wounds.
The central material of her 'Cells' series: metal cages containing personal objects, body fragments, and furniture. The cage evokes both prison and protection.
Louise Bourgeois kept notebooks from the 1930s onward. These intimate writings, often illustrated, served as a means to explore her emotions and directly fed into her sculptures.
Favored materials in her works from the 1960s–1970s for their organic texture, evoking skin, flesh, and viscera. 'The Destruction of the Father' is the most striking example.
Used for her most intimate sculptures depicting hands, faces, or entwined bodies. The marble brings a classical and timeless dimension to deeply personal themes.
Louise Bourgeois worked daily in her New York studio, wearing a simple apron, well into old age. The regularity of manual work was for her both a therapy and a discipline.
School Curriculum
Daily Life
Morning
Louise Bourgeois rose early and began her day by writing in her intimate notebooks. She recorded her dreams, anxieties, and ideas for sculptures. This daily writing practice was for her just as essential as her plastic work.
Afternoon
She spent the afternoon in her Chelsea studio modeling, welding, or assembling her works. She worked with great physical rigor, personally handling latex, plaster, and metal, often assisted by a small number of trusted technicians.
Evening
On Sunday evenings, she hosted her famous 'Sunday Sessions', gathering artists and critics around debates on art and psychoanalysis. On weekdays, evenings were devoted to reading — Freudian psychoanalysis, poetry — and correspondence.
Food
Of French origin, Louise Bourgeois placed great importance on a well-kept table. She appreciated French cuisine and shared meals with her extended family. The conviviality of mealtimes contrasted with the solitary intensity of her studio work.
Clothing
In her studio, she consistently wore an apron or work smock over simple clothing. Outside, she had a sober elegance, typical of a Parisian bourgeoise transplanted to New York, without ostentation.
Housing
She lived for decades in a Chelsea townhouse (New York), which served as both her residence and studio. The space was cluttered with works in progress, materials, books, and personal objects — an environment that itself resembled one of her 'Cells' installations.
Historical Timeline
Period Vocabulary
Gallery
Maman de Louise Bourgeois - Bilbao
Den Haag - Gemeentemuseum (39820389591)
Museo Guggenheim -- 2021 -- Bilbao, Euskadi, España
Annual exhibition of contemporary American sculpture, paintings, watercolors, 1957
Annual exhibition of contemporary American sculpture, paintings, watercolors, drawings, 1956
A portion of the Lillie and Hugh Roy Cullen Sculpture Garden at one location of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, which showcases masterworks of 20th-and 21st-century sculpture by artists including LC
'Maman' Spider Sculpture, National Gallery of Canada, Sussex Dr, Ottawa (491814) (9447578845)
Louise Bourgeois, New York 1996
Open Letter to Roland Redmond
Louise Bourgeois's "Hebammen Buch,.."
Visual Style
Esthétique viscérale et psychologique, alternant formes organiques en latex et bronze monumental, dans une palette de rouilles, d'os et de chair pâle.
AI Prompt
Dark, visceral, and intimate visual atmosphere. Raw textures of latex, plaster, bronze, and marble. Organic shapes suggesting flesh, body parts, and viscera. Monumental steel structures contrasting with soft suspended fabric. Deep shadows with stark overhead lighting in a cluttered studio space. Earthy tones — rust, bone white, deep burgundy, charcoal — punctuated by pale flesh and oxidized bronze. Strong vertical forms beside rounded cell-like enclosures. Psychological tension between the monumental and the intimate. References to domestic objects rendered uncanny: oversized needles, spiral threads, cage-like architectures.
Sound Ambience
Les sons de l'atelier — outils sur pierre, métal travaillé, métiers à tisser en fond — mêlés aux ambiances urbaines de New York des années 1950-2000.
AI Prompt
The rhythmic clacking of weaving looms in a Parisian tapestry workshop, the scrape of metal tools on stone and plaster, the dull thud of a mallet striking marble. Distant street sounds of mid-century New York filtering through studio windows: taxi horns, steam pipes hissing. The soft tearing of latex, the creak of steel armatures being shaped. Quiet footsteps on a concrete floor. Occasional murmur of voices from a Sunday gathering of artists debating in a cramped New York loft. The low hum of electric lights over a worktable covered in sketches and thread.
Portrait Source
Wikimedia Commons
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Références
Ĺ’uvres
The Destruction of the Father
1974
Femme Maison
1946-1947
I Do, I Undo, I Redo
2000
