Louise Joséphine Bourgeois (French pronunciation: /luiz buʁʒwa/; 25 December 1911 – 31 May 2010),was a renowned French-American artist and sculptor, best known for her contributions to both modern and contemporary art, and for her spider structures, titled Maman, which resulted in her being nicknamed the Spiderwoman She is recognized today as the founder of confessional art.In the late 1940s, after moving to New York City with her American husband, Robert Goldwater, she turned to sculpture. Though her works are abstract, they are suggestive of the human figure and express themes of betrayal, anxiety, and loneliness. Her work was wholly autobiographical, inspired by her childhood trauma of discovering that her English governess was also her father’s mistress. Early life
Bourgeois was born on 25 December 1911 in Paris, France She was the middle child of three born to parents Josephine Fauriaux and Louis Bourgeois.Her parents owned a gallery that dealt primarily in antique tapestries. A few years after her birth, her family moved out of Paris and set up a workshop for tapestry restoration below their apartment in Choisy-le-Roi, for which Bourgeois filled in the designs where they had become worn. By 1924 her father, a tyrannical philanderer, was indulging in an extended affair with her English teacher and nanny. According to Bourgeois, her mother, Josephine, “an intelligent, patient and enduring, if not calculating, person”, was aware of her husband's infidelity, but found it easier to turn a blind eye. Bourgeois, an alert little girl, hoarded her memories in her diaries. As a child, Bourgeois did not meet her fathers expectations due to her lack of ability. Eventually, he came to adore her for her talent and spirit, but she continued to hate him for his explosive temper, domination of the household, and for teasing her in front of others.In 1930, Bourgeois entered the Sorbonne to study mathematics and geometry, subjects that she valued for their stability. | “ | I got peace of mind, only through the study of rules nobody could change. | ” |
Her mother died in 1932, while Bourgeois was studying mathematics. Her mother's death inspired her to abandon mathematics and to begin studying art. Her father thought modern artists were wastrels, and refused to support her. She continued to study art through joining classes where translators were needed for English-speaking students, in which those translators were not charged tuition. In one such class Fernand Léger saw her work and told her she was a sculptor, not a painter. Bourgeois graduated from the Sorbonne in 1935, and continued to study at various art schools, such as the École du Louvre and the École des Beaux-Arts. During the time in which she was enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts, she turned to her father's infidelities for inspiration. She discovered her creative impulse in her childhood traumas and tensions. Bourgeois had a desire for first-hand experience, and frequently visited studios in Paris, learning techniques from the artists and assisting with exhibitions. Bourgeois briefly opened a print store beside her father's tapestry workshop. Her father helped her on the grounds that she had entered into a commerce driven profession. Bourgeois met her husband Robert Goldwater, an American art historian noted for his pioneering work in the field then referred to as primitive art, in 1938 at Bourgeois' print store. Goldwater had visited the store to purchase a selection of prints by Pablo Picasso, and "in between talks about surrealism and the latest trends, [they] got married." They migrated to New York City the same year, where Goldwater resumed his career as professor of the arts at New York University Institute of Fine Arts, while Bourgeois attended the Art Students League of New York, studying painting under Vaclav Vytlacil, and also producing sculptures and prints. Bourgeois had been unable to conceive by 1939, so she and Goldwater briefly returned to France to adopt a French child, Michel. However, in 1940, she gave birth to another son, Jean-Louis, and in 1941, she gave birth to Alain.n 1954, Bourgeois joined the American Abstract Artists Group, with several contemporaries, among them Barnett Newman and Ad Reinhardt. At this time she also befriended the artists Willem De Kooning, Mark Rothko, and Jackson Pollock. In 1958, Bourgeois and her husband moved into a terraced house at West 22nd Street, in Chelsea, Manhattan, where she both worked and lived for the rest of her life.
Later life
In 1973, Bourgeois began teaching at the Pratt Institute, Cooper Union, and the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture.
Bourgeois received her first retrospective in 1981, by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Until then, she had been a peripheral figure in art whose work was more admired than acclaimed. In an interview with Artforum, timed to coincide with the opening of her retrospective, she revealed that the imagery in her sculptures was wholly autobiographical. She confided to the world that she obsessively relived through her art the trauma of discovering, as a child, that her English governess was also her father’s mistress.
In 1993, when the Royal Academy of Arts staged its comprehensive survey of American art in the 20th century, the organisers did not consider Bourgeois' work of significant importance to include in the survey.
In 2010, in the last year of her life, Bourgeois used her art to speak up for LGBT equality. She created the piece I Do, depicting two flowers growing from one stem, to benefit the nonprofit organization Freedom to Marry.
Bourgeois had a history of activism on behalf of LGBT equality, having created artwork for the AIDS activist organization ACT UP in 1993
Death
Bourgeois died of heart failure on 31 May 2010, at the Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City. Wendy Williams, the managing director of the Louise Bourgeois Studio, announced her death.She had continued to create artwork until her death, her last pieces were finished the week before.
The New York Times said that her work "shared a set of repeated themes, centered on the human body and its need for nurture and protection in a frightening world."
Her husband, Robert Goldwater, died in 1973. She is survived by two sons, Alain Bourgeois and Jean-Louis Bourgeois. Her third son, Michel, died in 1990.
