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If you plan on visiting the Tate Modern anytime between now and the end of January, you will be confronted upon your arrival by a rather unfriendly looking 30ft. tall arachnid. Do not be alarmed. It is merely Bourgeois’ immense bronze and stainless steel sculpture Maman (1999). Guarding the entrance to the gallery, the work was first exhibited at the Tate Modern back in 2000 where it dominated the famed Turbine Hall. The first work ever to be housed in the space, (currently playing home to Doris Salcedo’s Shibboleth) the monumental sculpture acts as a fitting introduction to Bourgeois’ work, concerned as it is with filial relationships and the stresses within them. Bourgeois associates the spider with her mother, a tapestry restorer by profession. Operating on both a personal and more general level, the creature makes for a fitting representation of motherhood. Home-maker, protector, repairer, the spider is both threatening and fragile, a point Bourgeois reinforces through emphasis on the sculpture’s long, spindly legs, culminating in tiny points to highlight its instability.
You become aware as you gaze upwards of their perverse sexual ambiguity
Ideas of motherhood, or rather the woman’s role within the home, are the focus of the first room of the exhibition. Arranged chronologically, the 10 rooms mark a sequential journey through the ever-evolving art and mind of Bourgeois. Room One houses some of the artist’s early paintings, carried out before finding her calling in the language of sculpture. The Femme Maison series, produced during the 1940s, depicts a number of half-woman-half-house images; female figures trying to escape the confines of their domestic settings, representing the relationship between woman and environment and the latter’s effect on female identity.
The three following rooms are given over largely to the display of Personages, a series of sculptures marking Bourgeois’ first foray into the three-dimensional form. Primal in appearance, they are figural representations which prefigure the instability and vulnerability of Maman. It is the 1960s, however, that provide us with the most interesting and controversial of Bourgeois’ work. Abandoning harsh forms and rigid materials in favour of organic objects made from latex and plaster, the focus of her sculpture takes a decidedly sexual turn. Upon entering Room Six, you are confronted by a hanging display of various sexualized forms. Walking both underneath and amongst them, you become aware as you gaze upwards of their perverse sexual ambiguity. What on first glance appears to be a (somewhat drooping) representation of the male anatomy, upon closer inspection can just as easily be read as a pair of breasts or a gaping vagina. It is for her work in these rooms that Bourgeois is most celebrated by feminist theorists. Dominating the space is the 1974 self-enclosed sculpture, The Destruction of the Father. Resembling the inside of a huge shoebox covered on all sides with fields of phallic forms and lit with a red light, the strange grotto depicts a Kleinian dinner table where the overbearing head of the household is on the menu. A projection of Bourgeois’ ill-will towards her cheating father, it is a representation of the overpowering, dismembering and devouring of the dictatorial father figure.
The remaining rooms house works from the 80s through to the present day. Much larger in scale, they include the intensely private ‘cells’ - caged collections of found objects relating closely to the life of the artist. It is, however, Bourgeois’ contemporary fabric sculptures which provide the highlight here. Made from scraps of material from her old wardrobe, they depict scenes from the wide-ranging spectrum of human life such as childbirth and sex. Once more, we are presented with the effortless combination of the personal with universal experience.
Indeed, it is the dual relevance of Bourgeois’ art, and the exhibition as a whole which stands out the most when considering this retrospective. Whilst the ten rooms provide us with a chronological ‘crash course’ in the varying movements of and influences behind twentieth century art, they first and foremost reveal an intimate portrait of the life of one incredible woman. Charting the growth and development of Bourgeois’ ideas and psyche, whilst highlighting the enduring themes and issues which continue to plague her into old age, the exhibition forms a worthy tribute to this dynamistic artist who, even at the age of 95, shows no signs of slowing.
Louise Bourgeois runs until the 20th January at London’s Tate Modern.
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