One of the great figures of modern art, Louise Bourgeois’ embrace of duality is revealed in a posthumous exhibition that brings work owned by the Tate and National Galleries of Scotland to Blackpool’s Grundy Art Gallery.
If Louise Bourgeois’ work is personal, inward looking and intimate, it’s not reflected in its scale. The French sculptor, painter and printmaker’s seminal work is a 30-foot steel spider, too large to house at the Grundy’s posthumous exhibition of her work. Its eight spindly legs, which stand improbably on sharp-tipped pointe, support an irregular-ribbed spiralling body above a wire mesh containing 17 gleaming marble eggs.
When she revealed the gargantuan spider at the opening of Tate Modern in 2000 Bourgeois was 88 years old. It defied expectations the artist would fade into diminutive obscurity in old age and fiercely protected Bourgeois’ place in the art world that had dismissed her until she was in her seventies.
“She used her work to lash out,” says Tamar Hemmes, curator at Tate Liverpool where the Artist Rooms exhibition was previously displayed. “She must have been aware that people found her work difficult to deal with but she was very unapologetic about it.”
That was clear in her tempestuous relationship with long-term studio assistant and friend Jerry Gorovoy.
“Even though he was her friend she would lash out at him but then also really need him and depended on him. On the one hand she wanted to be liked and she wanted to be cared for and, on the other hand, she had very strong ideas and opinions. She was definitely not the easiest person to be around.”
She used her work to lash out… she was very unapologetic about it.
Duality is ubiquitous in Bourgeois’ work and there is a gentle side to the feminine spider she titled Maman, the French equivalent to “Mummy”. Spiders were a recurring motif and their presence is felt in the Grundy’s exhibition. The motif was introduced in 1995 with her poem accompanying nine etchings entitled Ode à Ma Mère – Ode to My Mother – who she described as “deliberate, clever, patient, soothing, reasonable, dainty, subtle, indispensable, neat, and as useful as a spider”. Literally too, her mother was a weaver.
Bourgeois was born in Paris on Christmas Day in 1911 to parents who restored and sold medieval and Renaissance tapestries. Her father was prone to lashing out too, and would by turns treat his daughter to adoration and humiliation. She sought protection from her mother but the child could not protect her from a bout of the Spanish flu and her father’s betrayals. When she was 10 he moved his mistress into the family home, ostensibly as Bourgeois’ governess.
Highly intelligent, at 18 she began studies in maths and geometry at the Sorbonne – an influence perhaps on Maman’s delicate balancing act – but abandoned them when her mother died in 1932.
“Bourgeois had to take care of her mother a lot so I think in a way she felt as if her childhood had been stolen from her,” says Hemmes, who points to themes of abandonment, isolation, family and motherhood in Bourgeois’ work.
“She was a woman who had a lot of fears and anxieties and suffered from depression,” says Hemmes. “She turned to art because that allowed her to deal with her emotions probably in a way that mathematics couldn’t.”
She opened a print shop next door to her father’s tapestry gallery, where she met and married art historian and professor Robert Goldwater. They moved to New York and started a family.
“The spiders, but also other works, reflect on Bourgeois’ own feelings towards motherhood from her perspective. She had three sons and I think she found it difficult, as many women struggle with motherhood and having to care for children while also wanting to be your own individual.”
Hemmes says Cell XIV is one of her favourite pieces in the Artist Rooms exhibition. It’s one of a series of installations Bourgeois began in 1989 and, in a nod to her parents’ trade, uses textiles.
“It’s a really beautiful piece – a cage-like structure and within it you’ve got these three heads that are made of red fabric that have been stitched together. The stitching almost resembles scars and these three heads pull apart with quite anguished expressions on their faces.
“It’s representative of contrasting feelings within one person and how that can pull one person apart. And then the cell is, on the one hand, something that protects, but also something that confines, so it’s a really interesting piece… That push and pull between different ideas is something that you’ll see in a lot of her works.”
Artist Rooms: Louise Bourgeois is at the Grundy Art Gallery 8th July-9th September. Keep your eye on Blackpool Social Club’s listings for more info as it’s released.
Main image: Louise Bourgeois, Spider I, 1995. Artist Rooms: Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. Lent by The Easton Foundation 2013. © The Easton Foundation/VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2023. Photo © Tate
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