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The Arts Intel Report

Louise Bourgeois: Once there was a mother

Louise Bourgeois, Self Portrait, 2009. Drypoint, some with watercolor and ink additions, digital print, and embroidery on fabric.

Sept 8 – Dec 23, 2023
443 W 18th St, New York, NY 10011

This exhibition focuses on little-seen prints by Louis Bourgeois (1911–2010), many from the last decade of her long life, a time when she was particularly drawn to the subjects of pregnancy and childbirth—metaphors, of course, for creation. There is no golden corona around her view of the process, however. The female body is bloated, almost monstrous, with ballooning breasts and swollen nipples. Think of the Venus of Willendorf possessed by a tiny humanoid within. One of the highlights of the show is the spectacular 2009 textile work Self Portrait. On an old white bedspread, Bourgeois stitched the numerals 1 to 24 in a huge circle (really more of an oval). With this clock of 24 hours, a nod to one of the classical unities, she tells the story of her life in a single day. Each hour has its own printed drypoint picture. Starting and ending with 24 (at the top) is the artist’s famous symbol of her mother: a looming spider with cage-like legs. The pictures from one to 23 move chronologically, from childhood through fertility and family, to artistic isolation and mind-body ambivalence. Above the clock are three more totems of sex, birth, and blood (note the echo been the oval pregnancy and the oval clock). It’s a work with no exit—a primal cycle, an unblinking eye, the universe a womb. —Laura Jacobs

Photo: © The Easton Foundation and Hauser & Wirth / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY