Long May You Runaway, Louise Bourgeois

 Not too long ago, I featured the work of Louise Bourgeois in one of my Artist of the Week posts. A few weeks ago, this dynamic, energetic and fascinatingly creative woman died at the ripe age of 98 last May. She continued to work until the day she died, and was, in fact, in the process of setting up an exhibition at the Magazzino del Sale in Venice at the time of her passing.

A photo of a sculpture series I photographed at the Williams College Museum of Art in Williamstown, Massachusetts:

Artist of the Week: Louise Bourgeois b. 1911

" My emotions are disproportionate to my size. My emotions are my demons."

~ Louise Bourgeois

LOUISE BOURGEOIS: THE SPIDER, THE MISTRESS AND THE TANGERINE is a cinematic journey inside the world of a legend of modern art and an icon of feminism. Onscreen, the nonagenarian Louise Bourgeois is magnetic, mercurial and emotionally raw--an uncompromising artist whose life and work are imbued with her ongoing obsession with the mysteries of childhood. Her process is on full display in this intimate documentary, which features the artist in her studio and with her installations, shedding light on her intentions and inspirations. Louise Bourgeois has for six decades been at the forefront of successive new developments, but always on her own powerfully inventive and disquieting terms. In 1982, at the age of 71, she became the first woman to be honored with a major retrospective at New York's Museum of Modern Art. In the decades since, she has created her most powerful and persuasive work, including her series of massive spider structures that have been installed around the world. Filmed with unparalleled access between 1993 and 2007, LOUISE BOURGEOIS: THE SPIDER, THE MISTRESS AND THE TANGERINE is a comprehensive and dramatic documentary of creativity and revelation.

LOUISE BOURGEOIS: THE SPIDER, THE MISTRESS AND THE TANGERINE: Movie Trailer - Watch more top selected videos about: Movie_Trailers, Louise_Bourgeois:_The_Spider,_The_Mistress_And_The_Tangerine, Louise_Bourgeois, Marion_Cajori

Bourgeois interview

Louise Bourgeois:  An Intimate Look at a Provocateur

Spirals abound in Louise Bourgeois’s art. She says they make her think of control and freedom, and of strangling someone...

Spiral Woman
 

Louise with Spider IV, in 1996.

Bourgeois is best known for these sculptures and casts of giant spiders. There is a meaning in there. 

"My best friend was my mother.  She was deliberate, clever, patient, soothing, reasonable and dainty, subtle, indispensable, neat and useful as a spider." 

 Modern and contemporary art sometimes takes knowing something about the artist. Bourgeois fascinates me:  both in her work and in her independent energy and spirit. I'm currently reading a book I picked up at the Williams museum store called The Runaway Girl. 

 Maman
Installed outside the Ottawa National Gallery

  "subtle", huh? hehehe  :-)

 Do You Love Me?

The Blind Leading the Blind

1947-49

wood construction and paint
" If I was to have a museum, I don't think I'd have any words on the wall at all. I want people to have a visual experience. I would show what I am working on now. "

 Spider Home

 This small sculpture is more fitting of the quote above and my favorite of the spiders Bourgeois created.

"...all my work in the past fifty years, all my subjects, have found their inspiration in my childhood.  My childhood never lost its magic, it has never lost its mystery, and it has never lost its drama."
~LB

Blind Man's Buff

 Femme Maison, 1946-47
Louise Bourgeois: Between Body and Anti-Body 

The spiral is glass, this time, hanging from the ceiling of the Guggenheim in NYC.

I recently had the pleasure of photographing the nine piece installation depicted below, which decorates a parking island in front of the Williams College Museum of Art. All of the pieces are depicted in my photographs of the exhibition by clicking here. See this post for other photos of these sculpture series.

The following three photos are my own, taken a couple of years ago at the MoMA, NYC.

 Quarantania

Shadow Shot Sunday - Eye Shadows

Front of William College Museum of Art, featuring Eyes (nine elements), 2001, by Louise Bourgeois.
Commissioned on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the museum.

Louise Bourgeois is a French-born American Abstract Expressionist Sculptor, born in 1911

 To see a couple of truly professional photos of this sculpture series go here

Shadow Shot Sunday is brought to you every week by Tracy at Hey Harriet from Brisbane, featuring photography from around the world.