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Lot Essay
Reminiscent of primitive fertility idols or mummified Ancient Egyptian bodies, Louise Bourgeois’ Couple is softly cocooned in a thin pod of gauzy pink fabric. The androgynous figures embrace each other atop a pink marble slab while their heads lean in for an imminent kiss. A metal-framed vitrine encloses the scene, transforming this intimate moment into a public one, as if the couple was part of an archaeological display. In both subject and medium, Couple is a potent exorcism of Bourgeois’ own past. The result is a powerful expression of the essence of Bourgeois’ work: the fluid nature of the self and the sexual, psychological and intellectual threads that knit us together.
Executed in 2003 and created in the artist’s ninety-fourth year, Couple sees Bourgeois’ practice come triumphantly full circle: the use of needlework revisits a foundational aesthetic impulse that began in her family’s antique tapestry repair workshop in Aubusson in the 1920s. In her use of fabric to create the figures, Couple boldly repurposes her early talent as a seamstress. Having worked in lithography, carving, casting, assemblage, installation and performance art over the course of her seven-decade career, Bourgeois’ return to fabric creates two forms that bare their skin and sutures openly, with a sense of the body radically cut up, augmented and reassembled. Memory and selfhood are explored and reified into a material presence that exists firmly in the world. The choice of pink as the primary color for the present lot by Bourgeois was also a deliberate one – as the color has gendered associations.
Weaving is an important metaphorical motif in Bourgeois’ practice. From its autobiographical genesis in her parents’ atelier, she has long associated the idea of sewing and repair with her mother, who she saw as a protective, nurturing figure, and who had herself been irreparably damaged by her husband’s unfaithfulness and cruelty. The image of a spider – a patient, meticulous maternal weaver – appears in drawings by Bourgeois as early as 1947, and is the subject of numerous important sculptures including the monumental Maman (1999). More than a simple cipher for motherly care, however, the spider can also be read to stand in for Bourgeois herself, making a defiant statement of female creativity in a field dominated by male artists. Her weaving is no domestic chore, but a mode of visionary fabrication from deep-seated narrative strands of self. In 1988 Bourgeois stated that “The skeins of wool are a friendly refuge, like a web or a cocoon. The caterpillar gets the silk from his mouth, builds his cocoon and when it is completed he dies. The cocoon has exhausted the animal. I am the cocoon. I have no ego. I am my work” (L. Bourgeois, ‘Statements 1988’, in H-U. Obrist and M-L. Bernadac (eds.), Louise Bourgeois: Destruction of the Father / Reconstruction of the Father, Writings and Interviews 1923-1997, Cambridge, MA, 2005, p. 173).
The entwined couple’s placement in a glass vitrine echoes Bourgeois’ Cells, an important series of works that she executed in the late 1980s. These room-sized assemblages of objects and sculpture, inviting the viewer into an intimate psychological interior, were unnervingly ambiguous: were they homes, places of shelter or prison cells? Similarly, the vitrine of Couple makes the viewer a voyeur. The seminal exhibition, Louise Bourgeois. La Famille, that took place at the Kunsthalle Bielefeld in 2006, displayed a large grouping of woven figurines, cementing the importance of these works within the artist’s ouevre. With the vitrine works, the viewer gazes upon a contained body, recalling the cage-like motif found in Francis Bacon’s paintings as well as the existential frames that surround the sculptures of Giacometti – both artists admired by Bourgeois. In Bacon’s work in particular, this cage creates a sense of anxiety and claustrophobia. There is a fine line between self-containment and entrapment. It seems, however, that Bourgeois is content in solitude. The figures in Couple are protected by its glass vitrine, and imbued with a sense of iconic and reliquary power. “I’m a complete loner,” Bourgeois has said. “It doesn’t help me to associate with people; it really doesn’t help me. What helps me is to realize my own disabilities and to expose them” (L. Bourgeois, ‘Statements from an Interview with Donald Kuspit’, in H-U. Obrist and M-L. Bernadac (eds.), Louise Bourgeois: Destruction of the Father / Reconstruction of the Father, Writings and Interviews 1923-1997, Cambridge, MA, 2005, pp. 164-65).
In Couple, Bourgeois displays an aspect of herself knitted from the filaments of experience: a rich, cathartic and imperfect presence that expresses abilityas much as restriction. It materially references notions of a cocoon, tapestry, and body, Creating and recreating herself through her art, Bourgeois transcends her traumas with magical intensity, weaving a work of vivid, uncompromising charisma. In doing so, Bourgeois explores and even heals the pain of her past while weaving a work that will stand long into the future.
Executed in 2003 and created in the artist’s ninety-fourth year, Couple sees Bourgeois’ practice come triumphantly full circle: the use of needlework revisits a foundational aesthetic impulse that began in her family’s antique tapestry repair workshop in Aubusson in the 1920s. In her use of fabric to create the figures, Couple boldly repurposes her early talent as a seamstress. Having worked in lithography, carving, casting, assemblage, installation and performance art over the course of her seven-decade career, Bourgeois’ return to fabric creates two forms that bare their skin and sutures openly, with a sense of the body radically cut up, augmented and reassembled. Memory and selfhood are explored and reified into a material presence that exists firmly in the world. The choice of pink as the primary color for the present lot by Bourgeois was also a deliberate one – as the color has gendered associations.
Weaving is an important metaphorical motif in Bourgeois’ practice. From its autobiographical genesis in her parents’ atelier, she has long associated the idea of sewing and repair with her mother, who she saw as a protective, nurturing figure, and who had herself been irreparably damaged by her husband’s unfaithfulness and cruelty. The image of a spider – a patient, meticulous maternal weaver – appears in drawings by Bourgeois as early as 1947, and is the subject of numerous important sculptures including the monumental Maman (1999). More than a simple cipher for motherly care, however, the spider can also be read to stand in for Bourgeois herself, making a defiant statement of female creativity in a field dominated by male artists. Her weaving is no domestic chore, but a mode of visionary fabrication from deep-seated narrative strands of self. In 1988 Bourgeois stated that “The skeins of wool are a friendly refuge, like a web or a cocoon. The caterpillar gets the silk from his mouth, builds his cocoon and when it is completed he dies. The cocoon has exhausted the animal. I am the cocoon. I have no ego. I am my work” (L. Bourgeois, ‘Statements 1988’, in H-U. Obrist and M-L. Bernadac (eds.), Louise Bourgeois: Destruction of the Father / Reconstruction of the Father, Writings and Interviews 1923-1997, Cambridge, MA, 2005, p. 173).
The entwined couple’s placement in a glass vitrine echoes Bourgeois’ Cells, an important series of works that she executed in the late 1980s. These room-sized assemblages of objects and sculpture, inviting the viewer into an intimate psychological interior, were unnervingly ambiguous: were they homes, places of shelter or prison cells? Similarly, the vitrine of Couple makes the viewer a voyeur. The seminal exhibition, Louise Bourgeois. La Famille, that took place at the Kunsthalle Bielefeld in 2006, displayed a large grouping of woven figurines, cementing the importance of these works within the artist’s ouevre. With the vitrine works, the viewer gazes upon a contained body, recalling the cage-like motif found in Francis Bacon’s paintings as well as the existential frames that surround the sculptures of Giacometti – both artists admired by Bourgeois. In Bacon’s work in particular, this cage creates a sense of anxiety and claustrophobia. There is a fine line between self-containment and entrapment. It seems, however, that Bourgeois is content in solitude. The figures in Couple are protected by its glass vitrine, and imbued with a sense of iconic and reliquary power. “I’m a complete loner,” Bourgeois has said. “It doesn’t help me to associate with people; it really doesn’t help me. What helps me is to realize my own disabilities and to expose them” (L. Bourgeois, ‘Statements from an Interview with Donald Kuspit’, in H-U. Obrist and M-L. Bernadac (eds.), Louise Bourgeois: Destruction of the Father / Reconstruction of the Father, Writings and Interviews 1923-1997, Cambridge, MA, 2005, pp. 164-65).
In Couple, Bourgeois displays an aspect of herself knitted from the filaments of experience: a rich, cathartic and imperfect presence that expresses abilityas much as restriction. It materially references notions of a cocoon, tapestry, and body, Creating and recreating herself through her art, Bourgeois transcends her traumas with magical intensity, weaving a work of vivid, uncompromising charisma. In doing so, Bourgeois explores and even heals the pain of her past while weaving a work that will stand long into the future.