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INNOVATIVE, ORGANIC AND FEMININE: THE DRAWINGS OF LOUISE BOURGEOIS (1911-2010)

Louise Bourgeois, photograph by Christopher Lever
Louise Bourgeois, photograph by Christopher Felver

Known for her large scale sculpture and installation art, French-American artist Louise Josephine Bourgeois’ drawings of personal, domestic and feminine subjects allow us an intimate view into the creative thoughts and struggles of an artist in pursuit of her authenticity. Her childhood in France was marked by family discord and failure to reach the expectations of a domineering father. While studying mathematics at the Sorbonne, Bourgeois’ mother died, inspiring her to forge her own path and take up the study of art instead. Bourgeois studied at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere, the Ecole du Louvre and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, opening a small print shop in 1938 where she would meet her husband, American art historian Robert Goldwater. The couple moved to New York City where they would raise three children and where Bourgeois lived until her death in 2010.

Bourgeois was a prolific painter, printmaker and draftswoman, exploring her creative ideas on the flat surface of canvas or paper independently from her work in sculpture. Her work in the 1940’s represented some of the difficulties she had transitioning to her new life in a foreign country, and also her struggle to gain recognition in the New York art world. By 1954, Bourgeois had befriended de Kooning, Rothko and Pollock and was working as part of the American Abstract Artists Group. Across mediums, her work explored ideas of fear and vulnerability and their evolution into perseverance and stability. Bourgeois said at the time of her 1982 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art that the imagery in her sculpture was autobiographical and one can assume that much of the imagery in her intimate drawings is as well. Bourgeois’ drawings explore the images and subjects of her subconscious through self-portraits and renderings of body parts, eyes and mouths, and the subject of the natural world around her through subjects like animals and plants. Her drawings are emotional, evocative and highly personal. Bourgeois rejected the idea that her art was “feminist”, though in its subject matter and handling it is undeniably feminine.

We are pleased to be offering Louise Bourgeois’ Untitled, ink and crayon on paper, 1996, with an estimate of $15,000 – $20,000, in our December 5th auction.

This drawing is a fine example of Bourgeois’ pursuit of an understanding of the human form through emotional engagement. Her hand is not idealized or beautiful, rather it is clumsy and uncomfortable to look at, focusing the viewer’s attention on the artist’s hand but also on their own, drawing attention to the emotions this comparison causes. In its simple, organic lines and choice of color, Bourgeois’ Untitled ink and crayon on paper, brings us into the intimate, internal world of a great creative mind. Bourgeois worked consistently throughout her career but only achieved the recognition she deserved in her later life. In 2011, her work Spider set a record for the highest price paid at auction for a work by a female artist. Though this record has now been surpassed, Bourgeois’ is still in the top-tier of artists with strong secondary market prices.

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