Louise Bourgeois: Transforming Afflictions into Art

Louise Joséphine Bourgeois was born in Paris in 1911. She first delved into art as a youth, assisting her parents who were tapestry restoration artists. Bourgeois’ childhood and teenage years were tainted by the disturbing weight of her father’s affair with her household English tutor and her mother’s fickle health. Her childhood intertwined with the First World War which gravely impacted her future art. 

Oftentimes, the motifs of Bourgeois’ renowned installation art speak directly to her childhood. The works seek to transform symbols of her anger and fear, into something powerfully beautiful. Through the usage of horror elements, Bourgeois developed a tendency to channel her unruly rage and complicated past into art. Her art reflects the origin of its inspiration, oftentimes dancing around complex and taboo subjects. And yet, there is an undeniably universal quality to Bourgeois’ work that garners it something more than just expression, or critical acclaim. The human quality of her art turns a stationary sculpture into a metaphysical force, something that artists fight to do each and every day.

Much of Bourgeois’ work features gangly, impending spiders. These installations, largely made of metal, are one of her most distinctive styles of work. Although she first began sketching these spider-like figures in 1947, it was not until the 1990s that she began constructing the actual famed installation pieces. One of her most famous spider sculptures was constructed in 1999 and entitled Maman. It was created for the opening of the Tate Modern in London. The sculpture is made of steel and features a metal netted sac with marble spider eggs inside. There are variations of the original Maman all across the world, serving as symbols of Bourgeois’ complicated relationship with her mother and ancestry, explored via the concept of the spider as protector, and the spiders’ roles as makers of tapestries. 

She also commonly used the visuals of the cage or “the cell” in her multimedia work. Beginning in 1989, Bourgeois began assembling a series of cells out of wire, metal, fabric, old house parts, and other found objects (otherwise known as objets trouvés). These cells were attempts at conveying the confusions and anxieties found in one’s search for identity. 

Many of the cells were pieces of portraiture, such as Cell XIV and Cell XXVI. These portraits play with the concepts of humanity and the components of self. Bourgeois wanted to challenge the style of the portrait by attempting to construct an accurate portrayal of how she saw herself and the struggles within her mind. 

In one of her largest cells, the 1997, Passage Dangereux, Bourgeois crafts the entire narrative of a girl experiencing both physical and metaphorical growing pains. With items like sculpted bodies, electric chairs, bones, needles, thread, and more spiders, Bourgeois strung together her classical themes of girlhood, fear, death, and sex in a singular, yet impactful arc. The story calls back to Bourgeois’ own childhood, in which she was forced to grow up in the face of multiple traumatic and unsettling events. 

Many of her works, both paper and sculptural, revolve around the human body. She uses body horror in a way that subverts the commonalities of gore and guts. There is intent beyond shock or fear factor when she features the human body in abnormal ways. She is candid in her portrayals of birth and motherhood both in drawings such as Umbilical Cord and installations Pregnant Woman. Bourgeois uses the female figure to convey her relationship to her own mother, specifically by incorporating the thread her mother would have used to repair tapestries during Bourgeois’ childhood, for example, The Good Mother.

In an interview with Tate, Bourgeois said “I transform nasty work into good work. I transform hate into love.” It was important to her that the pain did not fester and grow, but that it became something far more powerful and beautiful. This use of art as an emotionally transformative means supersedes Bourgeois but manifests itself in much of our world’s best creations. 

Her work is thematically intense. Intertwined with her strained childhood, there is a natural vulgarity and sadness to much of her body of work. And yet, there is great beauty and power there too. Bourgeois’ philosophy speaks to the undeniably painful nature of life and the necessity of art. By taking skills of embroidery and crafting that she gained in her broken home, and transforming them into volatile artistic means of expression 

(Cover Image: Maman, via InherentBummer.com)