February 24th, 2016
When I was completing my art portfolio at the Ottawa School of Art, I received an assignment in my Art History class. Students had to pick an artist from a list of names, research this artist and present him or her to the class. I chose an obscure name, not Matisse or Picasso but Louise Bourgeois. I was surrounded by gifted artists and I was just passing through but I thought I could do a really good job at researching and presenting this artist.
I wasted no time reading up on Mrs Bourgeois and she rocked my world. I watched videos of this little old lady sculpting out of marble and metal. This tiny, frail elderly woman was fighting censors who objected to sexual imagery. She produced art to advocate for the rights of gay and lesbian individuals to marry. She also created art to support awareness and advocacy for ACT UP, an AIDS activist organization.
Louise Bourgeois was inspired to create art that examined sexuality, gender roles as well as the duality of vulnerability and control. She used her art to process early childhood trauma, mainly her awareness that her father was cheating on her ill mother with Louise's English tutor. Her father was domineering, making everyone else feel small and insignificant, including Louise. She explored her mother's vulnerability as well as her strength through projects like Femme Maison and Maman.
Femme Maison is a series of drawings, painting and sculptures of women's bodies either standing sideways or facing the viewer, sometimes the legs are straight but they can also be spread, feet touching to form a diamond. The head or sometimes the entire upper half of the body is a house instead of a head. This shows the women's preoccupation with everything domestic while being cut off from the rest of society. The sculpture I saw displayed a woman on her back, on the floor. Her head stuffed into what looks like a dog house.
Her series of spiders made of steel and marble is called Maman. They are an ode to her mother's strength and protective nature. Louise loved her mother. She watched her repair tapestries and saw this ability to fix things, like a spider working on her web, as a strength.
Her feelings about her father were also expressed through her art. Her sculpture, Fillette, is a two foot latex penis complete with head, shaft and testicles. I saw a photo of it hanging from a wire thread through the head, just dangling from the wall. During a photo shoot with Robert Mapplethorpe, she posed with her penis sculpture tucked in under her arm. The title of this phallic sculpture, Fillette, is meant to poke fun at it.
Much of Louise's work has a voyeuristic quality to it. She sculpted eyes out of metal and marble. She created installations called cells where you walked into a scenario that was meant to elicit an emotional response. There were some cells that you didn't walk into, you were just allowed to peer through an opening. In I Do. I Undo. I Redo. people were presented with three towers measuring 9 metres high, surrounded by spiral staircases. Guests were meant to climb up to the platform where they would see a jar with a figure of a mother and her child. The platforms were surrounded by huge mirrors so spectators could watch visitors interact with the art and with one another. In her Destruction of the Father installation, you witness the aftermath of a murder scene. She and a sibling have killed their father, dismembered and eaten him.
Louise was actively creating right up to her death. Her last creations were completed a week prior to her death at 98 years of age. For the last two years of her life, friend and photographer Alex Van Gelder photographed Mrs Bourgeois. In one photo she is wearing a black mask and holding a knife. In another photo she is staring at her aged face in the mirror. She was still showing her work in Museums in 2000 and 2001 in her 80s. This artist has examined many controversial subjects, creating provocative art with a variety of art mediums. She was creating and pushing buttons until her last breath in 2010. A life well lived, a great example for women everywhere, especially those who say they are too old to start creating.
Anne Walsh
www.artnsoul.org
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