PRESENTATION OUTLINE
Untitled Slide
In the late 1940s, after moving to New York City with her American husband, Robert Goldwater, she turned to sculpture. Though her works are abstract, they are suggestive of the human figure and express themes of betrayal, anxiety, and loneliness. Her work was wholly autobiographical, inspired by her childhood trauma of discovering that her English governess was also her father’s mistress. (wikipedia)
Materials
- marble
- plaster
- bronze
- wood
- latex
- fabric
Untitled Slide
the abstract blob-like children of an overbearing father have rebelled, murdered, and eaten him....
Is it necessary to understand the artist’s meaning in a work of
art in order to appreciate it?
Bourgeois's artwork is renowned for its highly personal thematic content involving the unconscious, sexual desire, and the body. These themes draw on events in her childhood for which she considered making art a therapeutic or cathartic process.
Untitled Slide
spider, both predator (a sinister threat) and protector (an industrious repairer), is an eloquent representation of the mother. The spinning and weaving of the spider’s web links to Bourgeois’s own mother, Joséphine, who also worked in the family’s tapestry restoration business, and who encouraged her to participate in their tapestry business.
How can we tap into inner-conflict to create meaningful art?
Bourgeois transformed her experiences into a highly personal visual language through the use of mythological and archetypal imagery, adopting objects such as spirals, spiders, cages, medical tools, and sewn appendages to symbolize the feminine psyche, beauty, and psychological pain.
Through the use of abstract form and a wide variety of media, Bourgeois dealt with notions of universal balance, playfully juxtaposing materials conventionally considered male or female. She would, for example, use rough or hard materials most strongly associated with masculinity to sculpt soft biomorphic forms suggestive of femininity.
Artistic Bio
- 1930 studied math and philosophy
- 1932 studied art
- 1938 moved to new york
- 1940-1950 created and showed
- retrospective at MOMA 1982 (first female)
- died in 2010