<< BACK

SEARCH

DONATE

Tate Modern
Bankside
+44 20 7887 8888
London
Level 4
Louise Bourgeois
October 11-
January 20, 2008

Louise Bourgeois spans seven decades of varied and prolific artistic output ranging from small scale experimental works to large scale installations from the 1980s and 1990s.

Louise Bourgeois’s long and distinguished career has engaged both modern and traditional techniques, exploring various themes in a range of styles, from abstraction to the ready-made. With over 150 works dating between 1938 and 2008, the exhibition includes the artist’s earliest paintings and works on paper; sculptures made in a variety of materials, including wood, steel, plaster, latex, marble, and bronze; large-scale installations from the 1980s and ’90s; a broad selection of drawings and prints from throughout her career; small-scale hand-made objects; and her most recent works, which utilize fabric. This unique, must-see presentation also reunites many of Bourgeois’s most well-known pieces, including The Blind Leading the Blind (1947-49), Fillette (Sweeter Version) (1968-99), and a number of her powerful Cell installations, such as Cell (Choisy) (1990-93), Cell (You’d Better Grow Up) (1993), Red Room (Child) (1994), Red Room (Parents) (1994), and Spider (1997). Louise Bourgeois is an opportunity to discover the artist’s most important works and explore the core themes that unite them across media.

Bourgeois has said that her childhood, which was rich with both craft and symbolism, is the source all of her artwork and its themes. Born to a family of weavers, Bourgeois spent her early years surrounded by fabrics and textiles, as she played an active role in her family’s business of repairing and restoring tapestries. Sewing needles signified restoration for Bourgeois, as she witnessed her mother’s constant efforts at conservation and repair; hence, a number of the artist’s large-scale sculptures take the form of needles, evoking both the psychological and physical symbolism of the device and its magic power. The spider, itself a weaver and repairer, is another highly charged figure that appears frequently in Bourgeois’s work. Other themes favored by Bourgeois include maternity, the couple, childhood, the body, sexuality, gender, and autobiography.

Born in Paris, Louise Bourgeois studied under Léger in the 1930s before moving to New York in 1938. Her first exhibition of sculptures was held in New York in 1949. Her 1982 solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York was the museum’s first ever retrospective of a female artist, revealing a sculptor of immense distinction working with a complex variety of materials which included marble, bronze, latex, fabric and mirrors. In 2000, her vast installation, I Do, I Undo, I Redo, was the first commission in The Unilever Series for Tate Modern.

The exhibition is curated by Frances Morris, Head of Collections (International Art) Tate Modern, Marie-Laure Bernadac, Curator, Louvre and Jonas Storsve, Curator, Centre Pompidou, with assistance from Ann Coxon, Assistant Curator, Tate Modern. It is organised by Tate Modern in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou, Paris. The exhibition will tour to Centre Pompidou in Spring 2008, The Solomon R Guggenheim Museum in New York in Summer 2008,Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art in Autumn 2008 and the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C. in Spring 2009.

It will be accompanied by an ambitious publication providing an overview of Bourgeois, not only as an influential creator of sculpture, installation, drawing and printmaking but also as a writer, critic and diarist. It will include items from 39 contributors and unpublished material by Bourgeois. The catalogue will also feature an illustrated biography as well as a full chronology.