Lessons from Louise Bourgeois
Louise Bourgeois was not an easy woman. Born in 1911, this prominent artist was relentlessly hardworking, fiercely intelligent and tempestuous to boot. Famed for her fleshy sculptures and towering metal spiders, Bourgeois considered herself a sculptor although much of her oeuvre is spread across two dimensions. A selection of her ink, watercolour and pencil drawings have been collected for Hauser & Wirth’s virtual exhibition, Louise Bourgeois. Drawings 1947–2007, which showcases the visual simplicity and psychological depth of her lesser-known work.
The spirals, scissors and strange protrusions in her drawings allude to anxiety, home and the body; themes Bourgeois revisited obsessively throughout her career. In celebration of this online exhibition, here are five pieces of wisdom from the discerning artist:
Don’t Limit Yourself
Louise Bourgeois studied mathematics and philosophy before turning to art after her mother’s death. As an artist she read widely, drawing inspiration from Freudian psychoanalysis and Sartrean existentialism, alongside her own experiences of childhood and motherhood.
The breadth of her knowledge was matched by the diversity of materials she employed to express her internal world. Bourgeois rendered her visions in rubber and wood, fabric, steel, latex and light, amongst a workshop of other materials. She loved the tactility of sculpture and if she couldn’t shape a substance to her needs, she simply abandoned the material and took to another medium.
Bourgeois always remained faithful to her own project. She never committed to a single movement, and resisted narratives about herself constructed by others, rejecting restrictive labels of feminist artist, surrealist and abstract expressionist. Her practice is testament to the power of refuting our own limiting beliefs, and those placed upon us by others. Every time we mistake self-doubt for fact, we diminish in size. Bourgeois was barely five foot in height, but her presence was so much larger.
Be Bold
Bourgeois didn’t shy away from taboo in her art, which dealt in ugly feelings and troubled relationships. The emotional reverberations from her father’s affairs, her mother’s illness and Louise’s own childhood anxieties infuse her work with ambivalence and vulnerability. She never tired of excavating her childhood memories for artistic material, Oedipal currents simmering within her drawings and sculptures (she devoured Freud’s writings and received psychoanalytic therapy for over three decades).
Bourgeois’ The Destruction of the Father (1974) exemplifies the boldness of a foreign woman carving space in the male-dominated New York art scene of the seventies. This womb-like room is the realisation of a family psychodrama, constructed from plaster and latex mounds cast in red light. The piece depicts children turning against their domineering father as they dismember and lay out his body. Bourgeois once explained that the platform in the centre represents a bed, but also “the table where your parents made you suffer”. Both table and bed, two domains of this father’s rule have become a single, sacrificial altar as a spawn of rotund feminine shapes bear witness to his demise.
Cannibalism and patricide don’t make for a palatable family meal, but Bourgeois was not fearful of turning the stomachs of her audience. ‘The audience is bullshit’, her diary declared. The artist dared to assert her voice and worked to actualise her vision — expressions of self-belief that inspire us to trust ourselves, which is an empowering act of boldness.
See the Lighter Side
Amongst expositions of anxiety and abandonment, many of Bourgeois’ works offer a wink of humour and a touch of eroticism.
Fillette (1968) is French for ‘little girl’, and also the name of Louise’s now-infamous hanging sculpture. Essentially a hefty phallus made from plaster and coated in latex, Bourgeois described the “masculine attributes” of Fillette as “very delicate”. “I wanted to represent something I love”, she said, “I obviously represented a little penis”. When 14 years later she sat for photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, Bourgeois smiled mischievously at the camera with Fillette tucked under her arm. Her knowing twinkle enriches the photograph with warm humour, which penetrates through her formidable reputation to show us, like the best portraits, a true glimpse of the subject it depicts.
“Life is so funny. Life is so ridiculous”, Bourgeois offered by means of explanation for the absurd qualities of her art. She had a dark sense of humour and she loved gossip. Though difficulty pulsates through her work, Louise understood the essentiality of laughter and lightness.
Celebrate Your Body
Bourgeois told curator William Rubin that she was “constantly interested in the human body”. Plaster eyes, watercolour thighs and metal limbs constitute her body of work, which dismembers and reconstructs the human figure into a multitude of forms. Louise saw the body and its contours as ripe for manipulation, presenting our most immediate home back to us as though through a fun-house mirror. She fostered a sense of the uncanny in her work, recasting the familiar as something strange and unsettling.
Do Not Abandon Me, Bourgeois’ collaboration with fellow artist Tracey Emin, takes a more tender approach. This series of sixteen gouache torsos celebrates the body in all its sensuousness; pregnant, erect, corpulent and slender. These flesh-toned pigments and pencil etchings divulge the joy (and suffering) of birth, desire and infatuation.
Bourgeois didn’t limit the body to a single symbol or form; in her art it is both sexy and terrible, diverse in shape and size. From Louise we can learn that our physical form needn’t be groomed and disciplined to be valued. Respect for the body extends beyond its physique, to its strength, creative potential and physical capacities.
Respect the Process
Louise believed she was born an artist, and didn’t stop creating until she died in 2010. Bourgeois’ work is that of an artist comprehending herself, with the audience cast as voyeurs in a highly personal performance.
She worked tirelessly and for its own sake, caring little for wealth or the admiration of others. Though dismissive of fans and flattery, Bourgeois particularly loathed artists with a taste for profit: “The artist is lucky to be able to overcome his demons without hurting anybody”, she declared. “Instead of being grateful, they want to make money. It is ridiculous!”
“I work every day of my life”, Louise once told critic Paulo Herkenhoff, “I am what I am doing”. She was not speaking of wage labour, but of dedicating time and energy to a fulfilling personal project. In an age when we are expected to maximise our earning potential at every turn, transforming hobbies into ‘side hustles’ and acquaintances into ‘contacts’, taking time to enjoy the journey is an act of mindfulness that is essential to our wellbeing. Respecting the process liberates us from the relentless means-to-ends cycle and allows us to simply be in the present moment. These moments are, after all, where all the living happens.
