Louise Bourgeois was a French sculptor born in 1911 who is considered a feminist artist. Her work often explored themes of femininity, betrayal, and family dynamics. She had a gifted artistic ability from a young age, but initially focused on other fields before dedicating herself to sculpture in the 1940s. Bourgeois' idiosyncratic style was not widely recognized until later in her career, but a 1982 MoMA retrospective brought her great success. She continued creating monumental sculptures and drawings until her death in 2010 at age 98, using her art to process personal trauma and maintain her mental health.

1. Late French Feminist Sculptor

2. 
 Louise Bourgeois is a French
artist who was born on the
25th of December, 1911. She is
considered a feminist artist
due to her feminist
exploration of the role of the
woman, which feature as
main parts in much of her
work.
Biography

3. 
 Born in Paris in 1911, Louise Bourgeois was
raised by parents who ran a tapestry restoration
business. A gifted student, she also helped out in
the workshop by drawing missing elements in
the scenes depicted on the tapestries. During this
time, her father carried on an affair with Sadie
Gordon Richmond, the English tutor who lived in
the family house. This deeply troubling—and
ultimately defining—betrayal remained a vivid
memory for Bourgeois for the rest of her life.
 Later, she would study mathematics before
eventually turning to art. She met Robert
Goldwater, an American art historian, in Paris
and they married and moved to New York in
1938. The couple raised three sons.
Biography – Early Life

4. 
 Early on, Bourgeois focused on painting
and printmaking, turning to sculpture
only in the later 1940s. However, by the
1950s and early 1960s, there are gaps in
her production as she became immersed
in psychoanalysis. Then, in 1964, for an
exhibition after a long hiatus, Bourgeois
presented strange, organically shaped
plaster sculptures that contrasted
dramatically with the totemic wood
pieces she had exhibited earlier. But
alternating between forms, materials,
and scale, and veering between
figuration and abstraction became a
basic part of Bourgeois’s vision, even
while she continually probed the same
themes: loneliness, jealousy, anger, and
fear.
Biography – Early Career
Bourgeois’s idiosyncratic approach
found few champions in the years
when formal issues dominated art
world thinking. But by the 1970s and
1980s, the focus had shifted to the
examination of various kinds of
imagery and content.

5. 
 In 1982, at 70 years old,
Bourgeois finally took
center stage with a
retrospective at The
Museum of Modern Art.
After that, she was filled
with new confidence and
forged ahead, creating
monumental spiders, eerie
room-sized “Cells,”
evocative figures often
hanging from wires, and a
range of fabric works
fashioned from her old
clothes.
Biography – Peak of Career

6. 
 All the while she constantly
made drawings on paper, day
and night, and also returned to
printmaking. Art was her tool
for coping; it was an exorcism.
As she put it, “Art is a
guarantee of sanity.” Bourgeois
died in New York in 2010, at
the age of 98.
Biography – Late Career

7. 
 The following works are a series created by
Bourgeois. When viewing these works, I want you to
answer the following questions as you see fit.
 What is the role of the woman?
 What is the role of the audience and who is the
audience?
 What could the placement of the houses and the
figures represent?
Femme Maison (1945-47)

8. 

9. 
 A note in her diary in 1980 that read:
The only access we have to our volcanic unconscious and
to the profound motives for our actions and reactions is
through shocks of our encounters with specific people.
 In-class Exercise: Sketch an image of yourself (clothed!!!)
with something encasing your head that you feel is
something that traps you, or holds you back in life. Take a
picture of it, swap images with someone in the class and
analyse each other’s works using the Subjective Frame.
Artist Quote