Terrifying Expressions

A self portrait of Louise Bourgeois was something that I really wanted to see, to see exactly how she viewed herself.  In her piece “A Self Portrait” completed in 1993 with etching and aquatint colors on Rives BFK, it shows in my eyes both a man and a woman sharing the same eyes.  Both the man and woman share their eyes but keep the individuality of their noses and lips.  their is also a third person who I would take as a child or young adult.  It seems she is conflicted with how she shes herself.  Maybe she sees herself still as a child, or maybe she has the same struggle with her sexuality as Freida Khalo.  This portrait instantly reminded me of Khalo’s work, the comparison of her as a male Frieda and as a female Frieda.  It’s almost like she has no identity to herself, but to the world they are both beloved female artists.

This video is great, it represents her and her art work…it’s a collage of Louise Bourgeois!  Even the music is her, and it shows her various pieces of work (of course not all of them).  Bourgeois shows that she can work in every material/medium; wood, latex, bronze, plaster, marble, etc and excelled at all.  She is one of the world’s best sculptors and has help pave the way for women artist.  Bourgeois was very in tune with her emotions and sexuality and it showed in every piece of her work.

A very simple sculpture. What does it represent? What is the history behind it? What does it mean to her? I couldn’t find much on this particular sculpture. I do know that she middle child of three. So maybe it is as simple as that!?

Louise Bourgeois says that she transfered her emotions and/or energies through her sculptures.  People who interviewed Bourgeois and from viewing videos of her one can see the type of energy she produces.  She is a lively lady even in her late ages and very precise.  She wants/makes you understand what she is saying or making and she does the same when being asked questions.  She is a master in all mediums, wood, fabric, rubber, and stone and her sculptures are erotic images and some are even found in nature (Cumuls).  Her pieces also show/produce feelings of being vulnerable and fragile, which Bourgeois also relates closely to sexuality and erotic.  Bourgeois was the first woman sculptorin 1982, to have the New York’s Museum of Modern Art a retrospective of her art work, one of her many accomplishments.

Louis Bourgeois has said that Janus Flueri is“its interior mass expresses strength and hardness. It is perhaps a self-portrait – one of many”.  Janus Flueri is a very provacative piece of art, which was completed in bronze in 1968.   The background information of the piece is that Janus is the Roman God with two faces, one that faces towards the past and the other facing towards the future.  The God had a bipolar aspect to his empire/temple, meaning things were either closed (in times of peace) and open (in times of war).  The piece of art that Bourgeois created from my eyes is two penises facing opposite directions, much like the God named Janus, but the connection of the two penises is what appears to be a vagina.  This would also make sense to me because Janus had the biloar mentality which I think Louise, may have been bipolar throughout her work.  Janus flueri, is often described with the adjective “flowered”  which is a visual metaphor for the female genitalia as a blossom.  Masculine and feminine are once again united in this work with two faces in which, through a subsequent formal shift, penis becomes breast(www.http://www.centrepompidou.fr/education/ressources//ENS-bourgeois-EN//ENS-bourgeois-EN.html).  The piece of artwork is very unique much like that of Louise Bourgeois and it takes a few minutes to take in everything that she intended for us, but once realized offers a very unique perspective.

I recently found some drawings/paintings that Bourgeois had completed in 1988, which I found to be most appealing.  I am the girl that loves trees and loves to look at all the different branches (limbs) that each individual tree has.  Each tree has their own story and I like to try and figure each story out.  These pictures caught my eye because her tree is not like your traditional tree that one may draw with a stump and one bunch of leaves and growth at the top, but in Bourgeois’ work there is a stump with branches coming off the stump and of course the one at the top. There is a littel branch stemming off of another branch, and that could entere in one’s mind as new life or baby (starting a new branch of your life.  The Art of Improving Nature had several drawings and each one  means something different, in the second piece I see that the original stump is now branching off into two stumps, which in my mind means the family is growing and starting to lose touch with their roots.  In the ninth piece, Bourgeois has the tree growing to new heights and also with a crutch to hold up one of the branches and one branch has been broken from the tree.  In this piece I think shes stating that families can fall apart but there should be a piece, even an outsider, who can keep the family a whole.  This is how I interpreted Louise Bourgeois’ “The Art of Improving Nature”.

Louise Bourgeois had an imagination like no one I have ever met.  Her mind just ran free and her hands brought what she was thinking to paper or scuplture.  She is an amazing artist who was not recognized for her work until her seventies, long over due!  In her drawings “Femme Maison” she offere a glimpse into her mindset…the pictures in point of view show a woman’s identity and how she is attached to her domestic role in the household. There is no face to acknowledge the woman, but instead there is a house covering her face.  The only other things you see are the woman’s genitals/sexual parts, in my mind means that the man is only truly appreciative of a woman’s sexual organs and of course her household duties.  Bourgeois draws and sculpts art that other artists are too scared to put into their work, but Bourgeois claims her work with the sexual tension and emotionality of it all.

Louise Bourgeois was very interested in sexuality, trauma and isolation/loneliness.  In her sculpture “Seven In Bed” you see seven bodies laying in bed and all were trying to become familiar with their neighbor.  This particular sculpture caught my eye because at first glimpse I saw seven bodies, but then taking a closer examination of the sculpture I saw more heads than bodies.  Bourgeois shows deformation of the human body and has the bodies kissing and holding one another.  The seven bodies are naked and you can see some of their genitals, their bodies have stitch work almost appearing to look like they have been “fixed” or “repaired” from a trauma.  Their are some bodies that have two heads and they appear to engaged but also somewhat lonely and are located in the middle of the seven.  The seven are clearly are participating in an orgy, a bizarre and eccentric orgy.  Louise Bourgeois stated “All my work in the past fifty years, all my subjects, have found their inspiration in my childhood. My childhood has never lost its magic, it has never lost its mystery, and it has never lost its drama.”  To think of this sculpture as a part of someone’s childhood is kind of disturbing to me, because their is a lot of  sexual behaviors going on with multiple peoplem, not just one or two but seven bodies in total with some having two heads.

Below is the link to a picture of the sculpture “Seven in Bed” by Louise Bourgeois:

http://www.recirca.com/reviews/louisebourgeois/seveninbed.jpg

What do you think of when you read this title and see this sculpture? Arch of Hysteria. When I first looked at this I saw someone who is very flexible, a gymnast perhaps?

Stemming from her interest in the physical, emotional, and psychological aspects of pain and fear, Bourgeois was drawn to the arch of hysteria as theorized and represented by the nineteenth-century neurologist Jean Martin Charcot (1825-1893). While working at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, Charcot sought to represent hysteria by documenting the performances of his female patients. The physical tension of the hysterical arch – an intense muscular contraction, resulting in immobility and paralysis of the limbs – is emblematic of an equally extreme emotional state. Bourgeois makes this highly vulnerable position even more so by suspending her male figure from the ceiling. In choosing to represent him in an attitude traditionally associated with the female, the artist transgresses the social and sexual roles assigned to women, challenging the misconception of hysteria as a female malady.

http://www.tate.org.uk/images/cms/12445w_elaine_showalter_18.jpg

What does this piece of work look like to you? To me it looks like an insect larva coming out of its shell and either looks like guts or becoming a bug of some sort. Kinda gross if you ask me. In my opinion Louise was a bit on the morbid side with her works of art. Everything I have seen so far appears at first glance, very dark, kind of mysterious. I’m still trying to understand why she chose to do the types of sculptures that she did do. Her piece titled Maman was the first one to catch my eye. This is the second. So far, I think her work is creepy and morbid as I have said. However, when I start to read about her work, each time I get a whole different perspective then what I see at first. Here is a web site that shows the particular piece that I speak of;

To my great surprise once I read about it, this is what the website had to say;

“The work, in bronze, represents two flaccid penises linked by a central almost formless element that evokes the feminine slit and pubic hair. It is this junctional element whose exuberant matter overflows without precise limits onto the other two parts with their impeccable finish, that makes this work stand out in the series, the adjective “flowered” referring through visual metaphor to the female genitalia as a blossom. Masculine and feminine are once again united in this work with two faces in which, through a subsequent formal shift, penis becomes breast.

As for the modalities of its suspended presentation, it translates for the artist “passivity”, whereas “its interior mass expresses strength and hardness. It is perhaps a self-portrait – one of many”, she notes. Exceeding the limits and the identities of things, Janus fleuri might thus be a self-portrait of the artist, “an undoer of narcissism and of all imaginary identity as well, sexual included,” as defined by Julia Kristeva in Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (Columbia University Press, 1982, p. 208).”

I never would have guessed 2 penis’ of all things! This women is truly mysterious and wondrous.