Marie-Laure Bernadac, a leading expert in Louise Bourgeois's work, invites nine artists from both sides of the Atlantic to share their views of this major artistic figure of the 20th century.
A truly Transatlantique figure, Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010), born in Paris, spends most of her life in New York City where she moves in 1938, eventually taking American citizenship. A sculptor and plastician of considerable talent with a polymorphous practice, she is recognized and celebrated far earlier in the United States than in France.
Marie-Laure Bernadac, a leading expert in Bourgeois's work, invites nine artists from both sides of the Atlantic to share their views of this major artistic figure of the 20th century. Their contributions prove the extent to which Louise Bourgeois continues to fascinate even the younger generations of artists.
Born in Paris in 1911 and a New Yorker since 1938, Louise Bourgeois created a unique oeuvre—that owes no allegiance to 20th-century "isms"—in the course of a career than has spanned more than 60 years. Psychologically charged and dealing with the realm of human emotion (love, desire, dependency, sexuality, rejection, jealousy, and abandonment), her art is grounded in her own life and experience: "My goal is to re-experience a past emotion … to relive anxiety … anxiety is a passive state, and the object is to be active and take control." Yet Louise Bourgeois did not create an autonomous universe as an artistic hermit. While her art is nourished by personal experience, it also draws from art and art history—a wellspring of inspiration from which she developed her themes, concepts, and approach to media in both two- and three-dimensional works.
