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Lot Essay
Conceived in 1948-1949, just after Louise Bourgeois’s first solo exhibition in 1945 and during her transition to life in New York City, Spring emerged from an already innovative and fearless mind. Bourgeois is undoubtedly one of the most individual and ground-breaking artists of the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries, and her oeuvre has resonated with multiple generations of artists and thinkers globally. Spring is an example of the unparalleled aesthetic sensibilities that fueled a career of nearly six decades. Her work and life were always intertwined, and this generosity cemented her place in history as a generous, rigorous, and introspective artist. As Bourgeois muses, “I like to be a glass house. There is no mask in my work. Therefore, as an artist, all I can share with other people is this transparency” (P. Herkenhoff, “An Interview with Louise Bourgeois,” Artspace, 2003, https://www.artspace.com/magazine/interviews_features/book_report/louise-bourgeois-phaidon-folio-54962). Residing in the same private collection for the past 40 years, the present work is a pivotal example of that transparency.
Though Bourgeois is perhaps best known for her Spider sculptures, works like Spring are equally influential and magnificent in their tender, anthropomorphic presence. Reminiscent of stacked cowry shells or perhaps a totem of the female form, the present work is both accessible and mysterious, tangible and surreal. At six feet tall, it mirrors the viewer, drawing us into a fantastical, primordial composition. Spring is perhaps a portrait, but not of a discernable entity. We see ourselves in the sculpture’s sensuous forms, and yet they are otherworldly at the same time. Rendered in cast bronze with a white patina (it is common for artists to conceive of a sculpture and cast it later), Spring is lustrous and detailed like an ancient bust, even as it simultaneously recalls the towering buildings of Bourgeois’s chosen home of New York. Bourgeois recalls, “I thought New York was beautiful, a cruel beauty in its blue sky, white light and skyscrapers” (R. Marshall, "Interview with Louise Bourgeois, August 23, 2007," Whitewall, no. 8, Winter 2008, p. 8). Additionally, one of Bourgeois’s most cherished memories was weaving with her mother, and we can see a similarly precise facture in the layered composition of Spring. Indeed, “[I]t was her gift for universalizing her interior life as a complex spectrum of sensations that made her art so affecting” (H. Cotter, “Louise Bourgeois, Influential Sculptor, Dies at 98,” New York Times, May 31, 2010, https://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/arts/design/01bourgeois.html).
Spring is among the most striking sculptures from Bourgeois’s Personages series, which occupied her in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Anticipating both performance and installation art, Bourgeois installed these sculptures in groups directly into the gallery floor, turning the show into what she called an "environment." The Personages could also refer to the uncanny admixtures of Dada. Though Bourgeois is distinct from the Surrealists, especially interesting in this context are the tactile, bodily objects created by Meret Oppenheim and Salvador Dalí. One might also look to Alexander Calder’s studies of gravity and motion in sculpture; likewise, Spring, with all its delicacy, seems as if it could come to life. It is no mistake that writer Grace Glueck argued of the Personages, “These works can now be seen as part of a powerful body of work that has brought an inspired personal vision to American sculpture” (G. Glueck, “Art in Review: Louise Bourgeois—The Personages,” New York Times, April 27, 2001, https://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/27/arts/art-in-review-louise-bourgeois-the-personages.html).
Bourgeois was born in 1911 in Paris to parents who owned a tapestry restoration business. She initially studied mathematics at the Sorbonne, but soon pivoted to art classes. Famed painter Fernand Léger encouraged her to consider sculpture, and, to supplement her studies, Bourgeois worked as a docent at the Louvre. She went on to operate her own small gallery space within her family's sales gallery and sold prints and drawings by Pierre Bonnard, Amedeo Modigliani, and Suzanne Valadon, though she perhaps could never have imagined that she would join the venerated ranks of art history alongside them. Bourgeois moved to New York in 1938, where she befriended the Abstract Expressionists: Barnett Newman, Ad Reinhardt, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, and Jackson Pollock. Her career and reputation only continued to expand as she reached her 70s, and she enjoyed her first retrospective, at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1982. It was the first retrospective at MoMA for a woman sculptor. Later in life, Bourgeois was known for hosting young artists in her Chelsea home, offering critique and community during her Sunday Salons. By the time of her death in 2010, she was an icon for countless artists. One such acolyte is Tracey Emin, with whom Bourgeois collaborated toward the end of her life. Of Bourgeois’s final years art historian Mignon Nixon eulogizes, “In the end, Bourgeois…concentrate[d] on the psychic facts of life, to be alive” (M. Nixon, “Losing Louise,” October, Fall 2010, p. 132). Bourgeois’s aesthetic aims were always this vast, which comes through in her prescient sculptures like Spring.
“You pile up associations the way you pile up bricks. Memory itself is a form of architecture.” - Louise Bourgeois
Bourgeois's perennial influence is the result of a storied career that changed the course of art history. After her first retrospective brought more attention to her career, Bourgeois participated in documenta IX in 1992, and went on to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale the following year. After her first retrospective brought more attention to her career, Bourgeois participated in documenta IX in 1992, and went on to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale the following year. Bourgeois was awarded the first ever Turbine Hall commission at the Tate Modern, London in 2000, and her 2007 retrospective at Tate toured around the world. Later this year, an exhibition of more than 150 works by Bourgeois will be on view at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, in Sydney, Australia.
Louise Bourgeois is undoubtedly one of postwar art’s most revered sculptors, as well as one of the most important artists of late Modernism. Critical acclaim came late for Bourgeois, but her awe-inspiring artistic output was tireless and driven not by a desire for success, but rather by an unwavering artistic vision. Spring, as evocative and imaginative as a poem or a fairy tale, sits between worlds and draws us into a completely new space. In viewing it, we experience ourselves in new ways, and we likewise see history anew. Spring, like the thawing beauty of its namesake, is hopeful and fecund. Bourgeois’s work continues to be central to how we imagine sculpture.
Though Bourgeois is perhaps best known for her Spider sculptures, works like Spring are equally influential and magnificent in their tender, anthropomorphic presence. Reminiscent of stacked cowry shells or perhaps a totem of the female form, the present work is both accessible and mysterious, tangible and surreal. At six feet tall, it mirrors the viewer, drawing us into a fantastical, primordial composition. Spring is perhaps a portrait, but not of a discernable entity. We see ourselves in the sculpture’s sensuous forms, and yet they are otherworldly at the same time. Rendered in cast bronze with a white patina (it is common for artists to conceive of a sculpture and cast it later), Spring is lustrous and detailed like an ancient bust, even as it simultaneously recalls the towering buildings of Bourgeois’s chosen home of New York. Bourgeois recalls, “I thought New York was beautiful, a cruel beauty in its blue sky, white light and skyscrapers” (R. Marshall, "Interview with Louise Bourgeois, August 23, 2007," Whitewall, no. 8, Winter 2008, p. 8). Additionally, one of Bourgeois’s most cherished memories was weaving with her mother, and we can see a similarly precise facture in the layered composition of Spring. Indeed, “[I]t was her gift for universalizing her interior life as a complex spectrum of sensations that made her art so affecting” (H. Cotter, “Louise Bourgeois, Influential Sculptor, Dies at 98,” New York Times, May 31, 2010, https://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/arts/design/01bourgeois.html).
Spring is among the most striking sculptures from Bourgeois’s Personages series, which occupied her in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Anticipating both performance and installation art, Bourgeois installed these sculptures in groups directly into the gallery floor, turning the show into what she called an "environment." The Personages could also refer to the uncanny admixtures of Dada. Though Bourgeois is distinct from the Surrealists, especially interesting in this context are the tactile, bodily objects created by Meret Oppenheim and Salvador Dalí. One might also look to Alexander Calder’s studies of gravity and motion in sculpture; likewise, Spring, with all its delicacy, seems as if it could come to life. It is no mistake that writer Grace Glueck argued of the Personages, “These works can now be seen as part of a powerful body of work that has brought an inspired personal vision to American sculpture” (G. Glueck, “Art in Review: Louise Bourgeois—The Personages,” New York Times, April 27, 2001, https://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/27/arts/art-in-review-louise-bourgeois-the-personages.html).
Bourgeois was born in 1911 in Paris to parents who owned a tapestry restoration business. She initially studied mathematics at the Sorbonne, but soon pivoted to art classes. Famed painter Fernand Léger encouraged her to consider sculpture, and, to supplement her studies, Bourgeois worked as a docent at the Louvre. She went on to operate her own small gallery space within her family's sales gallery and sold prints and drawings by Pierre Bonnard, Amedeo Modigliani, and Suzanne Valadon, though she perhaps could never have imagined that she would join the venerated ranks of art history alongside them. Bourgeois moved to New York in 1938, where she befriended the Abstract Expressionists: Barnett Newman, Ad Reinhardt, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, and Jackson Pollock. Her career and reputation only continued to expand as she reached her 70s, and she enjoyed her first retrospective, at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1982. It was the first retrospective at MoMA for a woman sculptor. Later in life, Bourgeois was known for hosting young artists in her Chelsea home, offering critique and community during her Sunday Salons. By the time of her death in 2010, she was an icon for countless artists. One such acolyte is Tracey Emin, with whom Bourgeois collaborated toward the end of her life. Of Bourgeois’s final years art historian Mignon Nixon eulogizes, “In the end, Bourgeois…concentrate[d] on the psychic facts of life, to be alive” (M. Nixon, “Losing Louise,” October, Fall 2010, p. 132). Bourgeois’s aesthetic aims were always this vast, which comes through in her prescient sculptures like Spring.
“You pile up associations the way you pile up bricks. Memory itself is a form of architecture.” - Louise Bourgeois
Bourgeois's perennial influence is the result of a storied career that changed the course of art history. After her first retrospective brought more attention to her career, Bourgeois participated in documenta IX in 1992, and went on to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale the following year. After her first retrospective brought more attention to her career, Bourgeois participated in documenta IX in 1992, and went on to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale the following year. Bourgeois was awarded the first ever Turbine Hall commission at the Tate Modern, London in 2000, and her 2007 retrospective at Tate toured around the world. Later this year, an exhibition of more than 150 works by Bourgeois will be on view at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, in Sydney, Australia.
Louise Bourgeois is undoubtedly one of postwar art’s most revered sculptors, as well as one of the most important artists of late Modernism. Critical acclaim came late for Bourgeois, but her awe-inspiring artistic output was tireless and driven not by a desire for success, but rather by an unwavering artistic vision. Spring, as evocative and imaginative as a poem or a fairy tale, sits between worlds and draws us into a completely new space. In viewing it, we experience ourselves in new ways, and we likewise see history anew. Spring, like the thawing beauty of its namesake, is hopeful and fecund. Bourgeois’s work continues to be central to how we imagine sculpture.