Bourgeois in 1990 with her
marble sculpture Eye to Eye
Photo: Guggenheim.org

by Ondine Cohane

I first became a fan of Louise Bourgeois when I saw her huge installation in the Great Turbine room in the Tate Modern in London a few years back. The sense of scale and subject was instantly accessible and moving even though I didn't know much of her previous work. If you happen to be in New York this summer, be sure to make a trip to the Guggenheim, which has just opened a huge retrospective of the artist's career. (Bourgeois was born in Paris in 1911 and immigrated to New York in 1938). The exhibit encompasses over 150 Bourgeois pieces, from the monumental installations and sculptures she's famous for to lesser-known paintings and works on paper.

The release on the show talks about her singular creative vision, "the tension between diametrically opposed emotional states--aggression and impotence, desire and rejection, terror and fortitude--is given palpable form in her late, room-like sculptures known as 'Cells' and the more recent body of work comprising sewn figures that represent pivotal moments in the cycle of life." That quote sums up so well all of the opposites at work in her art, particularly in this later part of her career. I love Bourgeois' spider sculptures and imagine they will sit well-placed in the Guggenheim's soaring rotunda. "Cells," the large enclosed installations, are truly interesting in terms of their autobiographic connotations--a mix of personal items with sculptures of things like stuffed heads and intertwined bodies that's terrifying but revelatory. The show runs until September 28 and the lectures and screening seem well worth the sign-up.