Louise Bourgeois | Niki
de Saint Phalle |
Eva
Hesse | Rebecca Horn
Yayoi Kusama | Annette
Messager
|
Jessica Stockholder
photo by Peter Bellamy, from Louise Bourgeois by Paul Gardner, Universe Publishing
Louise Bourgeois
Louise Bourgeois was born in Paris in 1911 on Christmas day. Bourgeois studied math at the Sorbonne, then studied art at the École des Beaux-Arts and the Grande Chaumière in Montparnasse.
Bourgeois has worked in marble, wood, paint, bronze, plaster, and latex. In the '40s, she produced several tall, thin wooden abstract sculptures. Her later work remains abstract but makes more overt references to the body.
Recently she has made installations or "cells" as she calls them. These cells enclose psychological and intellectual states, primarily feelings of pain. Some, like the example here, are like small rooms. As a result, a voyeuristic narrative is created as the viewer peers in at a grouping of symbolic objects. In the cell pieces, Bourgeois uses earlier sculptural forms and as well as found objects.
The work pictured here is Cell (Eyes and Mirrors) 1989-93. It is comprised of marble, mirrors, steel and glass. The marble eyes look out at the viewer and the mirrors reflects the viewer, but from the protected or inhibited distance of a cage. The mood seems to be one of passively watching and absorbing with the inability to act
