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Lot Essay
‘To rewind is to make a spiral. And the action demonstrates that even though time is unlimited, there is a limit to how much you can put on it. As you are tightening the spiral you must take care. If you tighten too much you risk breaking it. In this sense the spiral is a metaphor of consistency. I am consistent in my spiral. For me there is no break. There is never an interruption in the spiral because I can not stand interruptions’ (L. Bourgeois, quoted in ‘P. Herkenhoff in conversation with Louise Bourgeois, transcribed and edited by Thyrza Nichols Goodeve’, in R. Storr, P. Herkenhoff, A. Schwartzman (eds.), Louise Bourgeois, London 2003, p. 12).
Louise Bourgeois’ helicoid Labyrinthine Tower is one of her best-known sculptural forms, and a tribute to the symbolic significance of the spiral in the artist’s oeuvre. Rising from its plinth with increasingly concentrated revolutions, the work spirals upwards with totemic force. Yet, here the geometric architecture of her earlier centrifugal configurations dissolves into a new drooping, biomorphic form. Cast in monumental bronze, the work was first conceived in plaster, and other examples of the sculpture are held in international museum collections, including a cast in black marble (Collection Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul) and in iron (Grey Art Gallery of NYU, New York). Executed at a pivotal juncture in her practice, 1962 saw Bourgeois’ return to the public eye after the most extended period of depression of her life. Returning to sculpture after a nine year absence, Bourgeois began to focus on the metaphor of the spiral as, in her words, a ‘study of the self’ (L. Bourgeois, quoted in P. Herkenhoff, ‘Louise Bourgeois, Femme-Temps’ in Louise Bourgeois: Blue Days and Pink Days, exh. cat., Fondazione Prada, Milan, 1997, p. 273). Bourgeois’ art inextricably entwines personal experience and artistic expression. For over seven decades, she used sculpture as a means to excavate the painful memories and deeply repressed issues that had conditioned her youth. Attracted to the variable dimensions and repetitious quality of the spiral, for Bourgeois its coiled torsion evoked the unravelling of her tormented psyche. She observed, ‘To rewind is to make a spiral. And the action demonstrates that even though time is unlimited, there is a limit to how much you can put on it. As you are tightening the spiral you must take care. If you tighten too much you risk breaking it. In this sense the spiral is a metaphor of consistency. I am consistent in my spiral. For me there is no break. There is never an interruption in the spiral because I can not stand interruptions’ (L. Bourgeois, quoted in ‘P. Herkenhoff in conversation with Louise Bourgeois, transcribed and edited by Thyrza Nichols Goodeve’, in R. Storr, P. Herkenhoff, A. Schwartzman (eds.), Louise Bourgeois, London 2003, p. 12).
From 1962 Bourgeois dispensed with wood as her primary material and began to explore the initially liquid properties of plaster. From these experiments emerged the first of her centripetal Lairs, towers of Mayan proportions, which rise with primitive grandeur from base to summit, simultaneously grounded and aerial. For many years Bourgeois took on the household responsibility of winding the clocks around her home, learning to conflate this domestic task with stability. In her works of the early-1960s the spiral issues a distinctly female architecture that is founded in cohesion. ‘There is’, she says, ‘a feminine geometry. A torsade is something that revolves around an axis. This geometry is founded on poetic freedom and promises security’ (L. Bourgeois, quoted in ‘P. Herkenhoff in conversation with Louise Bourgeois, transcribed and edited by Thyrza Nichols Goodeve’, in R. Storr, P. Herkenhoff, A. Schwartzman (eds.), Louise Bourgeois, London 2003, p. 11). Evoking the organic growth of a geological formation, Labyrinthine Tower appears to be in constant flux. Yet, as it reaches the pinnacle of its evolution its rigorous facture softens, embodying the dialectic of hard and soft that defines Bourgeois’ concern with the mutability of gender. Interrogating sexual identity and its relation to the body as an unstable projection of the psyche, Labyrinthine Tower echoes Surrealist combinations of the male and the female within a single amorphous identity. She states, ‘I am not particularly aware or interested in the erotic of my work, in spite of its supposed presence. Since I am exclusively concerned, at least consciously, with the formal perfection, I allow myself to follow blindly the images that suggest themselves to me. There is no conflict whatsoever between these two level’ (L. Bourgeois, quoted in ‘William Rubin – Louise Bourgeois: Questions and Answers’, in M.-L. Beradac, H.-U. Obrist (eds.), Louise Bourgeois: Destruction of the Father Reconstruction of the Father, Writings and Interviews 1923-1997, London 2000, p. 86). In Labyrinthine Tower Bourgeois upends the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, a tale that chronicles the destruction of a dark force that resides at the heart of an impenetrable maze. Here, the artist explores the legend as a metaphor for those dark forces at work in the tormented mind, yet her labyrinth ascends skywards; neither fully extended nor entirely collapsed, its direction remains intentionally unclear. ‘The spiral’, she has said, ‘is an attempt at controlling the chaos. It has two directions. Where do you place yourself, at the periphery or at the vortex?’ (L. Bourgeois, quoted in M-L. Bernadac, Louise Bourgeois, Paris 2007, p. 67).
Louise Bourgeois’ helicoid Labyrinthine Tower is one of her best-known sculptural forms, and a tribute to the symbolic significance of the spiral in the artist’s oeuvre. Rising from its plinth with increasingly concentrated revolutions, the work spirals upwards with totemic force. Yet, here the geometric architecture of her earlier centrifugal configurations dissolves into a new drooping, biomorphic form. Cast in monumental bronze, the work was first conceived in plaster, and other examples of the sculpture are held in international museum collections, including a cast in black marble (Collection Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul) and in iron (Grey Art Gallery of NYU, New York). Executed at a pivotal juncture in her practice, 1962 saw Bourgeois’ return to the public eye after the most extended period of depression of her life. Returning to sculpture after a nine year absence, Bourgeois began to focus on the metaphor of the spiral as, in her words, a ‘study of the self’ (L. Bourgeois, quoted in P. Herkenhoff, ‘Louise Bourgeois, Femme-Temps’ in Louise Bourgeois: Blue Days and Pink Days, exh. cat., Fondazione Prada, Milan, 1997, p. 273). Bourgeois’ art inextricably entwines personal experience and artistic expression. For over seven decades, she used sculpture as a means to excavate the painful memories and deeply repressed issues that had conditioned her youth. Attracted to the variable dimensions and repetitious quality of the spiral, for Bourgeois its coiled torsion evoked the unravelling of her tormented psyche. She observed, ‘To rewind is to make a spiral. And the action demonstrates that even though time is unlimited, there is a limit to how much you can put on it. As you are tightening the spiral you must take care. If you tighten too much you risk breaking it. In this sense the spiral is a metaphor of consistency. I am consistent in my spiral. For me there is no break. There is never an interruption in the spiral because I can not stand interruptions’ (L. Bourgeois, quoted in ‘P. Herkenhoff in conversation with Louise Bourgeois, transcribed and edited by Thyrza Nichols Goodeve’, in R. Storr, P. Herkenhoff, A. Schwartzman (eds.), Louise Bourgeois, London 2003, p. 12).
From 1962 Bourgeois dispensed with wood as her primary material and began to explore the initially liquid properties of plaster. From these experiments emerged the first of her centripetal Lairs, towers of Mayan proportions, which rise with primitive grandeur from base to summit, simultaneously grounded and aerial. For many years Bourgeois took on the household responsibility of winding the clocks around her home, learning to conflate this domestic task with stability. In her works of the early-1960s the spiral issues a distinctly female architecture that is founded in cohesion. ‘There is’, she says, ‘a feminine geometry. A torsade is something that revolves around an axis. This geometry is founded on poetic freedom and promises security’ (L. Bourgeois, quoted in ‘P. Herkenhoff in conversation with Louise Bourgeois, transcribed and edited by Thyrza Nichols Goodeve’, in R. Storr, P. Herkenhoff, A. Schwartzman (eds.), Louise Bourgeois, London 2003, p. 11). Evoking the organic growth of a geological formation, Labyrinthine Tower appears to be in constant flux. Yet, as it reaches the pinnacle of its evolution its rigorous facture softens, embodying the dialectic of hard and soft that defines Bourgeois’ concern with the mutability of gender. Interrogating sexual identity and its relation to the body as an unstable projection of the psyche, Labyrinthine Tower echoes Surrealist combinations of the male and the female within a single amorphous identity. She states, ‘I am not particularly aware or interested in the erotic of my work, in spite of its supposed presence. Since I am exclusively concerned, at least consciously, with the formal perfection, I allow myself to follow blindly the images that suggest themselves to me. There is no conflict whatsoever between these two level’ (L. Bourgeois, quoted in ‘William Rubin – Louise Bourgeois: Questions and Answers’, in M.-L. Beradac, H.-U. Obrist (eds.), Louise Bourgeois: Destruction of the Father Reconstruction of the Father, Writings and Interviews 1923-1997, London 2000, p. 86). In Labyrinthine Tower Bourgeois upends the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, a tale that chronicles the destruction of a dark force that resides at the heart of an impenetrable maze. Here, the artist explores the legend as a metaphor for those dark forces at work in the tormented mind, yet her labyrinth ascends skywards; neither fully extended nor entirely collapsed, its direction remains intentionally unclear. ‘The spiral’, she has said, ‘is an attempt at controlling the chaos. It has two directions. Where do you place yourself, at the periphery or at the vortex?’ (L. Bourgeois, quoted in M-L. Bernadac, Louise Bourgeois, Paris 2007, p. 67).