ICA Bourgeois Exhibition Brochure

MARCH 28, 2007 – MARCH 2, 2008

REFLECTIONS OF TOI ET MOI

1 Robert Storr, Paulo Herkenhoff, and Allan Schwartzman, Louise Bourgeois (London: Phaidon Press Limited, 2003), p. 10.

2 Unedited footage from Branka Bogdanov’s interview for the documentary Inside the Visible, 1996, 31 minutes, directed and produced by Branka Bogdanov, ICA Director of Film and Media.

3 Louise Bourgeois with Lawrence Rinder, Louise Bourgeois: Drawings and Observations (Berkeley: University Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley; Boston: Bulfinch Press, 1995), p. 18.

“I am not what I look like. I am my work.” 1

Bourgeois in Boston brings together sculptures, prints, drawings, and a rare, early painting all by Louise Bourgeois, drawn from area collections, both public and private. Born in Paris in 1911, Bourgeois moved to New York City in 1938 where she continues to live. In the sixty years since her first solo exhibition, Bourgeois has become one of our most influential living artists. Her emotionally-charged body of work, a distinctive mix of abstraction and figuration, delves into childhood memories and the struggles of everyday life. Utilizing a variety of materials—wood, bronze, marble, steel, rubber, and fabric—she crafts highly evocative and personally cathartic objects that reference the body, sexuality, family, trauma, and anxiety.

Today, at ninety-five years of age, Bourgeois is still fiercely “contemporary,” as she produces new work and even hosts salons for artists at her home on Sunday afternoons.

The heart of Bourgeois in Boston is a substantial group of works owned by Boston philanthropic activist and ICA Trustee Barbara Lee. A champion of women artists with a strong interest in sculpture, Lee has collected work from the earliest part of Bourgeois’s career through the late 1990s. Her works, alongside those lent by a selection of other significant Boston institutions and collections, form a uniquely-located portrait of this artist. Bourgeois in Boston charts her oeuvre and highlights the themes of remembrance, the self, and the other that have consumed her from the very beginning.

In 1996, Louise Bourgeois was filmed in her Chelsea townhouse for an exhibition documentary. As seen in the raw footage, at one point Bourgeois, instead of answering a question, pulls a mirror out from beneath the books on her desk and holds it in front of her face. Reflecting back at the interviewer, she says: “don’t look at me. I don’t want to be there. Just look at yourself.”2 Bourgeois’s theatrical gesture is a telling illustration of the complex dynamics at play in her work.

The artist has never hidden the decidedly personal nature of her art and its connection to her history, even proclaiming that she is her work. Yet, this anecdote conveys how attempts at better understanding Bourgeois and her work, or of getting her to reveal herself, are often literally deflected and reflected back.

The sculptures in Bourgeois in Boston display this duality, serving both as self-portraiture/self-reflection and as a looking glass pointing back at us. This relates to what Bourgeois has referred to as the toi et moi (you and me), the theme in her work that speaks to the intricacies of human interaction, or as curator Lawrence Rinder put it: “this essential drive toward human rapport.”3 The pieces here can been seen as both reflections of Bourgeois, her reflections on others, reflections of ourselves, or most often, that gray area where these relationships overlap, intersect, and bleed into one another: where toi et moi meet.

The relationship of mother and child is the first that develops—our earliest example that there truly is a distinct “you” and “me.” Bourgeois’s youth has served as a fruitful, if traumatic, well of inspiration. In particular, the oft-retold (and almost-mythic) story of her father’s ten-year affair with Louise’s live-in governess, Sadie, weaves its way through much of her work. As well as a sustained investigation of her father, Bourgeois has returned to the subject of her mother again and again. One of the earliest works in Bourgeois in Boston is a 1947 painting entitled 1932, named for the year that her mother died. Bourgeois nursed her ailing mother up until her death and certainly may have felt responsible for emotionally “nursing” her from the pain of her father’s blatant infidelities.

In this abstracted mother and child image, the subjects play double roles. The wheeled cart in the center functions as both cradle and coffin. (Bourgeois describes it

On the cover: Spider, 1996. Photo: Markus Tretter Previous page: 1932, 1947. Photo: Eeva Inkeri Above: Ode à ma Mère, 1995. Photo: Christopher Burke

Above: Janus Fleuri, 1968. Photo: Christopher Burke Right: Cell (Hand and Mirrors), 1995. Photo: Peter Bellamy Next page: Untitled, 1947–49. Photo: Zindman Fremont

as a “bier,” a stand on which a coffin is placed.)4 Is the floating, skeletal figure nearby a distraught and weeping child, a passing soul, or a hovering mother? 1932, the artist recently explained, “represents the trauma of abandonment that still operates today.”5 Soon after making this work, Bourgeois moved away from painting, and has since become best known as a sculptor. Untitled, 1947–49, is an early painted wood sculpture from a group of works that she calls “Personages.” While today these sculptures are typically exhibited as distinct pieces, Bourgeois originally grouped them together, creating physical and psychic tensions among them. A fusion of man and woman, Untitled’s central dimple and bulbous carvings could allude to such body parts as a belly button, anus, mouth, teeth, breasts, or testicles. Bourgeois has described these works as “portraits” or “figures.”

Like us, they stand directly on the floor. While it may be smaller than the average person, Untitled is “Louise” height, making it, in part, a self-portrait.6 Similarly, Bourgeois has said of Janus Fleuri, 1968: “It is perhaps a self-portrait—one of many.”7 Like Untitled, the associations it evokes are in constant flux. As if to drive this point home, it is literally “two-faced.” The title references the Roman god Janus, the god of gates, doorways, and beginnings and endings, who is typically depicted with two opposing faces. Sculpted in plaster and cast in bronze, it hangs by a single wire; the two “faces” of Janus seem to melt or droop away from each other, the form melding male and female, vaginal and phallic, malleable and permanent. We see Bourgeois’s interest in self-portraiture and shifting, often divergent, meanings again in Spiral Woman, 1984. A small bronze woman dangles precariously over a piece of slate. Is she on the verge of falling into an abyss or has she risen from it?

The woman is headless—all but her arms and legs is a mass of swirling flesh. The spiral, as seen in the sculpture of the same name from the 1950s and works on paper such as To Hide, 1989–93, and Spirales, c. 1974–90, is a constant and meaningful shape for Bourgeois. “What do you think it represents? It represents Louise,” she has said.8 Symbolizing both chaos and control, the spiral is a graphic illustration of Bourgeois’s ever-dueling psyche.

Along with the spiral, the spider is one of Bourgeois’s most enduring motifs. The spider is a homage to her mother; in fact, Ode à ma Mère, 1995, a suite of etchings featuring the creature, translates to “ode to my mother.” As is true throughout her oeuvre,

there is an inextricable link between her drawings and prints and her three-dimensional work. From the mid-1990s into the 2000s, Bourgeois made a series of large-scale steel spiders. At almost eleven feet tall, Spider, 1996, looms above us, inverting the typical scale of person to spider. Perhaps its enormity is more indicative of the arachnid’s psychological impact for some. While spiders may inspire negative or fearful associations, for the artist, the spider: “relates to industriousness, protection, self-defense and fragility.”9 Spinner of intricate webs and slayer of insects, the spider is a positive force. Bourgeois has said: “‘The female spider’ has a bad reputation—a stinger, a killer. I rehabilitate her. If I have to rehabilitate her it is because I feel criticized.”10 Here again, as in the painting 1932, toi et moi are merged and conflated, as Bourgeois’s spiders are both mother and child, a child’s tribute to the mother and a self-portrait.

Cell (Hand and Mirrors), 1995, with its inclusion of mirrors, may most literally demonstrate how reflection and toi et moi play out in Bourgeois’s work.

The work is part of the Cell series; like the spiders, the Cells are grand in scale and architectural in their use of space. A combination of sculptural elements both found and made, these installations are suggestive depictions of emotions or memories. The doors and windows of Cell (Hand and Mirrors) open to reveal a piece of raw pink marble; on top rests a pair of fragmented marble hands, painfully curling in on themselves. Bourgeois lines the doors with small mirrors and places a round vanity behind the hands; what results is a kaleidoscopic reflection of various perspectives. She has said of the work: “There is your reality and there is my reality, both of which are constantly changing and becoming more complex and multiplying.”11 Cell (Hand and Mirrors), like all of Bourgeois’s work, is a visual representation of a particular, and very private, time, place or feeling. The artist always offers us glimpses into her world, holding up a mirror so that our own image is reflected. We can see ourselves in her powerful visions even if, in the end, we remain on the outside looking in.

Emily Moore Brouillet, Assistant Curator

4 Louise Bourgeois interviewed by author via email, February 2007.

5 Ibid.

6 Bogdanov’s interview for Inside the Visible, 1996.

7 Robert Storr, Paulo Herkenhoff, and Allan Schwartzman, Louise Bourgeois, p. 118.

8 Marie-Laure Bernadac and Hans-Ulrich Obrist, eds. Louise Bourgeois: Destruction of the Father/Reconstruction of the Father. Writings and Interviews 1923–1997 (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, in association with Violette Editions, London, 1998), p. 258.

9 Robert Storr, Paulo Herkenhoff, and Allan Schwartzman, Louise Bourgeois, p. 18–19.

10 Ibid. p. 140.

11 Louise Bourgeois interviewed by author via email, February 2007.

Biography

Selected Bibliography

Louise Bourgeois was born in 1911 in Paris, where she studied at the École des Beaux-Arts (1936–38) and in the ateliers of such noted artists as Fernand Léger. She moved to New York in 1938, where she lives and works today. Spanning over seventy years, Bourgeois’s exhibition history includes several notable highlights: The first woman ever to be given a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1982), she has had numerous solo exhibitions worldwide, including recent shows at Musée National d’art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France (1995); National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia (1995); Yokohama Museum of Art, Yokahama, Japan (1997); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1998); Museo Nacional Centro de Art, Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain (1999); Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Bilbao, Spain (2001); The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia (2001); and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland (2003).

Bourgeois has also been featured in several major group exhibitions, including: twenty annual and biennial exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, between 1945 and 1997; the Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA (1991); Kwangju Biennale, Korea (1997); SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM (1999, 2004); and the 12th Sydney Biennale, Australia (2000). Bourgeois represented the United States in the Venice Biennale (1993) and was awarded the Biennale’s Golden Lion as a Living Master of Contemporary Art (1999). Since introducing Bourgeois to Boston audiences in a 1953 group exhibition, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, has featured her work in recent shows including Inside the Visible (1996), Collectors Collect Contemporary (1999), and Getting Emotional (2005). In October 2007, Bourgeois will be the subject of an internationally touring retrospective organized by the Tate Modern, London.

Bernadac, Marie-Laure and Hans-Ulrich Obrist, eds. Louise Bourgeois: Destruction of the Father/Reconstruction of the Father. Writings and Interviews 1923–1997. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, and London: Violette Editions, 1998.

Bourgeois, Louise with Lawrence Rinder. Louise Bourgeois: Drawings & Observations. Berkeley: University Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley, and Boston: Bulfinch Press, 1995.

Keller, Eva and Regula Malin, eds. Louise Bourgeois: Emotions Abstracted, Works 1941–2000. CITY: Hatje Cantz, 2004.

Storr, Robert, Paulo Herkenhoff, and Allan Schwartzman. Louise Bourgeois. London: Phaidon Press Limited, 2003.

Nixon, Mignon. Fantastic Reality: Louise Bourgeois and a Story of Modern Art. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2005.

Wye, Deborah and Carol Smith. The Prints of Louise Bourgeois.

New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1994.

Programs Art Loves: Louise Bourgeois Thursday, April 5, 6:30 pm Director Jill Medvedow shares why this exhibition is important to her with a look at some of Bourgeois’s most powerful work over the past 60 years.

Space is limited. Free tickets available on a first-come, firstserved basis at box office one hour before program.

The ICA’s public programs are supported in part by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services

Support Bourgeois in Boston is sponsored by

The ICA is supported in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency, and the Boston Cultural Council, a local agency funded by the Massachusetts Cultural Council and administered by the Mayor’s Office of Arts, Tourism, and Special Events.

EXHIBITION CHECKLIST

1932, 1947 Oil on canvas 30 × 60 in. (76.2 x 152.4 cm) Collection of Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Untitled, 1947–49 Painted wood 78 3⁄4 × 12 × 12 in. (200 x 30.5 x 30.5 cm) Collection of Barbara Lee, Cambridge, MA Spiral Woman, 1951–52 Wood and steel 62 1⁄2 × 12 × 12 in. (158.8 x 30.5 x 30.5 cm) Collection of Barbara Lee, Cambridge, MA Germinal, 1967–92 White marble 5 1⁄2 × 7 3 ⁄8 × 6 1⁄4 in. (14 × 18.7 × 15.9 cm) Collection of Barbara Lee, Cambridge, MA Janus Fleuri, 1968 Bronze 10 1⁄8 × 12 1⁄2 × 8 3⁄8 in. (15.7 × 31.8 × 21.3 cm) Collection of Barbara Lee, Cambridge, MA Spiral Woman, 1984 Bronze with slate disc 11 1⁄2 × 3 1⁄2 × 4 1⁄2 in. (29.2 × 8.9 × 11.4 cm) disc: 1 × 34 3⁄4 in. (2.5 × 88.3 cm) Collection of Barbara Lee, Cambridge, MA Give or Take III, 1993 Cast bronze with brown and gold patina 2 7⁄8 × 9 1⁄2 × 13 1⁄4 in. (7.3 × 24.1 × 33.7 cm) Collection of Marlene and David Persky Cell (Hands and Mirror), 1995 Marble, painted metal and mirror 63 × 48 × 45 in. (160 × 121.9 × 114.3 cm) Collection of Barbara Lee, Cambridge, MA Spider, 1996 Bronze, black and polished patina 128 1⁄2 × 298 × 278 in.

(326.4 × 756.9 × 706.1 cm) Collection of Barbara Lee, Cambridge, MA Arched Figure No. 1, 1997 Fabric, rubber and steel 9 x 20 × 6 1⁄2 in. (22.9 × 50.8 × 16.5 cm) vitrine: 69 × 22 × 30 in.

(175.3 × 55.9 × 76.2 cm) Collection of Barbara Lee, Cambridge, MA Untitled, 1999 Fabric, wood and metal 25 1⁄2 × 8 × 12 in. (64.8 × 20.3 × 30.5 cm) vitrine: 74 × 18 × 20 in. (188 × 45.7 × 50.8 cm) Collection of Sandra and Gerald Fineberg On view March 28 – May 20, 2007 Thompson Street, 1945–90 Softground etching on paper 14 15⁄16 × 7 7⁄ 8 in. (38 × 20 cm) Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums Gift of Belinda L. Randall from the collection of John Witt Randall, by exchange Kisses (Bises) from the series Quarantania (plate 7: Boxwoods), 1947–90 Etching on cream Arches wove paper 18 11⁄16 × 13 1⁄16 in. (47.4 × 33.1 cm) Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts Gift of Mr. and Mrs. James N. Heald 2nd

Drawing No. 4; verso: Untitled, 1953 Black ink on gray-green laid paper 9 5⁄8 × 15 11⁄16 in. (24.5 × 39.8 cm) Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums The Lois Orswell Collection Spirales, c. 1974–90 Etching on paper 4 13⁄16 × 6 11⁄16 in. (12.3 × 17 cm) Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums Gift of Belinda L. Randall from the collection of John Witt Randall, by exchange To Hide, 1989–93 Drypoint on paper 6 3⁄ 8 × 6 7⁄ 8 in. (16.2 × 17.4 cm) Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums Margaret Fisher Fund Stamp of Memories I, 1990–93 Drypoint on paper 16 13⁄16 × 9 13⁄16 in. (42.7 × 25 cm) Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums Anonymous Gift Stamp of Memories II, 1990–93 Drypoint on paper 16 13/16 × 9 13/16 in. (42.7 × 25 cm) Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums Margaret Fisher Fund A Flower in the Forest, 1997 Lithograph on paper 22 3⁄ 8 × 30 1⁄8 in. (56.8 × 76.5 cm) Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums Margaret Fisher Fund Untitled, 2002 Screen print printed on cotton sheeting, hemmed and initialed by hand sewing 11 × 7 5⁄ 8 in. (28 × 19.3 cm) Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums Margaret Fisher Fund On view May 22 – August 26, 2007 Untitled, 1947 Ink and pencil on paper 11 1⁄4 × 7 1⁄4 in. (28.6 × 18.4 cm) Collection of Barbara Lee, Cambridge, MA Untitled, 1947–52 Red ink and pencil on paper 11 9⁄16 × 7 3⁄ 8 in. (29.4 × 18.7 cm) Collection of Barbara Lee, Cambridge, MA Untitled, 1948 Ink and pencil on paper 10 7⁄ 8 × 8 1⁄4 in. (27.6 × 21 cm) Collection of Barbara Lee, Cambridge, MA Untitled, 1948 Ink on paper 11 × 8 in. (27.9 × 20.3 cm) Collection of Barbara Lee, Cambridge, MA

Untitled, 1948 Ink and pencil on paper 11 × 8 1⁄2 in. (27.9 × 21.6 cm) Collection of Barbara Lee, Cambridge, MA Untitled, 1949 Purple and brown ink with pencil on paper 22 × 15 in. (55.9 × 38.1 cm) Collection of Barbara Lee, Cambridge, MA Untitled, mid-1960s Black ink on paper 12 1⁄ 8 × 6 3⁄ 8 in. (30.8 × 16.2 cm) Collection of Barbara Lee, Cambridge, MA The Three Graces, 1997 Oil, watercolor, ink and paper collage on paper verso: ink on cloth mounted on paper 23 3⁄4 × 28 1⁄4 in. (60.3 × 71.8 cm) Collection of Barbara Lee, Cambridge, MA On view August 28 – November 25, 2007 Spider, 1995 Drypoint on paper 21 3⁄ 8 × 15 7⁄ 8 in. (54.3 × 40.3 cm) Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Lee M. Friedman Fund Ode à ma Mère, 1995 Drypoint etching on paper Nine sheets; each: 12 × 12 in. (30.5 × 30.5 cm) Private collection Jitterbug, 1998 Color lithograph on music paper 18 1⁄4 × 24 1⁄4 in. (46.4 × 61.6 cm) Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA Purchased with funds from the Student Center Preview Program

Spiral Woman (detail), 1984.

Photo: Allan Finkelman

On view November 27, 2007 – March 2, 2008 The Puritan: Study #7, 1990–97 Gouache, watercolor, pen and ink, engraving on paper Diptych; each: 25 3⁄4 × 39 1⁄2 in.

(65.4 × 100.3 cm) Collection of BJ and Malcolm Salter Triptych for the Red Room, 1994 Color etching and aquatint, hand colored with watercolor, pen and ink, and gouache on paper Three sheets; each: 27 3⁄4 × 35 7⁄16 in.

(70.5 × 90 cm) Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA Museum purchase, The Dorothy Johnston Towne (Class of 1923) Fund Untitled, 1994 Intaglio on paper 36 × 28 in. (91.4 × 71.1 cm) Collection of Erica and Ted Pappendick Eyes, 1996 Drypoint on paper 14 × 14 in. (35.6 x 35.6 cm) Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA Purchased with funds from the Student Center Preview Program

Untitled #2, 2004 Drypoint and aquatint on Hahnemuhle bright white paper 15 × 17 in. (38.1 × 43.2 cm) Collection of Erica and Ted Pappendick Untitled (black) Study, 2005 Collage with unique etching, watercolor, gouache and ink on paper 19 3⁄4 × 56 1⁄ 8 in. (50.2 × 142 cm) Private Boston collection

THE INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART/BOSTON

100 Northern Avenue Boston, MA 02210