Exposing the inner world of 鈥榝ragile goddess鈥
Print Edition
FOR Louise Bourgeois, hell is the absence of others. A new Washington show featuring her early works offers an intimate portrait of this “fragile goddess” and her deeply personal take on isolation, sex and motherhood.
The National Gallery of Art in Washington chose to present just four sculptures by the late French-born artist known for her giant metal spiders that have spun their webs across the globe.
Instead, the museum focused on recently acquired, rarely shown works, including pen drawings (1947-50) reminiscent of the Aubusson region of central France, home to Bourgeois’s mother and known for its tapestries.
The show also features engravings and one of only three hand-colored copies of her large-scale book “The Puritan” (1990).
Bourgeois only gained recognition late in life but the pieces shown here, most of them created around the time of World War II, already took up the central themes that made her famous in old age.
She was often labeled a member of the surrealist movement, but the artist bristled at the notion, identifying herself instead with the existentialists led by Jean-Paul Sartre, a contemporary of hers. “Exploring the existential side of Louise Bourgeois is really what inspired the exhibition,” curator of modern prints and drawings Judith Brodie said. “I think it’s borne very much out of a wartime sensibility,” she said, noting that Bourgeois emigrated to the United States on the eve of World War II. “That sense of isolation, miscommunication, people trying to communicate, the struggle of trying to find a meaningful existence in a world that is basically indifferent.”
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