Louise Bourgeois: Emotions Abstracted

Louise Bourgeois: Emotions Abstracted

About the AuthorBorn in 1911 in Paris, Louise Bourgeoiswas raised in a household that famously included her father's mistress, who was also Louise's nanny. She studied philosophy and mathematics before turning to art in 1934, and over the next few years studied at various art academies and in the atelier of Fernand Leger, among others. She moved to New York in 1938 with her new husband, American art historian Robert Goldwater. Her first U.S. showing was in a print exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, and over the next 50 years, she exhibited consistently in solo and group shows. In 1982, Bourgeois was the subject of the first retrospective ever given to a woman artist at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and her work has remained in the spotlight ever since."Eva Keller is a curator with the Daros Collection, Zurich/Switzerland."Robert Storr is a curator, artist and critic who is the Dean of the Art School at Yale University. Among his many books is Modern Despite Modernism.Born in Paris in 1911 and a New Yorker since 1938, Louise Bourgeois created a unique oeuvre that owes no allegiance to 20th-century "isms" in the course of a career than has spanned more than 60 years. Her art is grounded in her own life and experience: "My goal is to re-experience a past emotion...to relive anxiety...anxiety is a passive state, and the object is to be active and take control." Yet Louise Bourgeois did not create an autonomous universe as an artistic hermit. While her art is nourished by personal experience, it also draws from art and art history--a wellspring of inspiration from which she developed her themes, concepts, and approach to media in both two- and three-dimensional works. Her rich and fascinating oeuvre is the subject of this publication, which presents more than 50 works from 60 years of creative activity in impressive full-color illustrations. Most of the works featured here are from the Daros Collection in Zurich.