THE
CRITICS
ART
To cut to the chase on the
subject of Louise Bourgeois,
she was one of the most
important artists who has
ever lived. It’s that simple.
Note I did not write talented,
inventive, brilliant, although
she was all of those things too.
Plenty of artists have been
talented and brilliant. But it
did not make them important
in the way Bourgeois was
important. Art was one kind
of world before she emerged
— and another afterwards.
Her backstory is crucial, so
here are the bare bones. She
was born in Paris in 1911. Her
parents were textile restorers
specialising in tapestries. In
her twenties she decided to
become an artist and began
moving in surrealist circles
before meeting the notable
American art historian Robert
Goldwater and moving with
him to New York.
They had three sons and
although she exhibited now
and then her middle years
were devoted mostly to
bringing up a family. Goldwater
died in 1973. She was in her
sixties. Slowly, inexorably, she
began coming into her own.
Louise Bourgeois
is simply one of
the world’s most
important artists —
and she didn’t really
start until her sixties
By the mid-1980s her name
was on everyone’s lips. When
she died, in 2010, at the
magnificent age of 98,
she left behind an art
world filled with
newly opened doors.
It’s an exemplary
story because it
coincided so
exactly with a
moment in art
history when
feminist voices
began asking why
so many female
artists had been
forgotten. As
Bourgeois rose to
prominence she
prompted the
question: how
many more are out
there? It was also
a story of a mature
European sensibility
having a profound
impact on American
art. If ever there was an
artist without a pixel of
pop art banality in her
make-up it was Bourgeois.
You see all this evidenced
vividly at the Hayward Gallery,
where a tremendous show has
arrived to remind us of her
impact and immerse us in her
edgy, nervy, exciting way of
making things. Called Louise
Bourgeois: The Woven Child, itfocuses on her fabric
works: the pieces she
made with cloths
and textiles in
which her
background
as the
daughter
of tapestry
restorers is clearly
proven. By working
with materials
drawn from the
domestic arena
— “women’s
materials” —
Bourgeois fertilised
art with a vigorous
new feed.
The first piece we
see proves the case.
A set of battered
old doors, banged
together into a circular
hut, encourage you
to peep inside at a
mysterious scene: items
of feminine nightwear
hang from hangers made
of animal bones; a metal
spider lurks on the ground;
a spooky steel model of a
house sits on a ledge.
Called Cell VII, this troubling
take on the notion of a doll’s
house feels immediately
Hitchcockian. The eerie
arrangement of domestic
items — a fluttering nightie, a
drooping petticoat — promptsfretful imaginings. And
although no one
mentions sex or
family terror or a
little girl’s fears, all
these topics seem to
be being addressed.
The downstairs
spaces at the Hayward
are busy with creepy sights in
which empty bits of clothing
stand in unsettlingly for
missing human presences. It’s
a process that feels closer to
voodoo than to traditional
sculpture. The bits of old
clothing and the fragments
of domestic interior bring an
unspoken eloquence to her art.
A row of heads stitched
loosely together from
fragments of tapestry and
blanket seem intent on
describing anxious states of
mind. They’re just bundles of
quickly stitched cloth, but
they manage to capture such
precise expressions:
screaming, dreaming,
staring blankly.
Cell XXV, subtitled The View
of the World of the Jealous Wife,
is one of many works that
seem to be admitting things
from Bourgeois’ own past to
illuminate bigger truths about
the male-female divide. This
time the bodiless clothes
hanging inside a cage are
Bourgeois’ own — a pretty
blue evening gown, a
housewife’s dress in white
cotton. They have been hung
so that one appears to be
staring suspiciously at the
other. The cut of the evening
gown emphasises the breasts,
and two large marble spheres
sitting pointedly in the cage
combine with a hanging
dress to form an erect penis.
Nothing specific has been saidThe woman who changed every
Different cloth
Left, Louise
Bourgeois in her
Manhattan
studio in 1982.
Right: Couple IV,
1997; The Good
Mother (detail),
2003; Cell XXV
(The View of the
World of the
Jealous Wife),- Below:
Untitled, 2002
WALDEMAR
JANUSZCZAK
ALL ARTWORKS © THE EASTON FOUNDATION/VAGA AT ARS, NY AND DACS, LONDON 2021. LOUISE BOURGEOIS IMAGE: JACK MITCHELL/GETTY IMAGES16 13 February 2022