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. | ” |
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.
