There is a famous photograph of Louise Bourgeois, taken in 1982. In it, the 71-year-old artist wears a coat of monkey fur and carries under her right arm, as though it were a handbag, a 24-inch penis.
It is to Robert Mapplethorpe’s credit that the portrait succeeds in drawing the viewer towards Bourgeois’s twinkling eyes and well-worn grin rather than the sculpture she brought along to his studio. But if the image has added to the mythology surrounding the artist, it is one of which she was in control; with Bourgeois nothing is left to chance.
In 1982 she became the first woman to receive a large retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It was also the year in which she chose to reveal her inspiration, namely her experience of childhood and the effect of her father’s long-running affair with her live-in nanny.
Born in the heyday of cubism (Paris, 1911), and moving to America in 1938, Bourgeois has always skirted the edges of the century’s key movements and yet she has consistently stood alone.
While the confession opened her work to overt autobiographical readings, it also had the effect of reducing many interpretations to that of pop psychology — something which has done her a disservice. In recent times, Bourgeois has moved away from an exploration of her relationship with the male figure toward that of the female.
As a magnificent show of her recent work at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) reveals, in her 90s Bourgeois has returned to her roots. The needles that emerged as elemental shapes in her early wooden, bronze and marble “presences” have found roles as creative tools.
Stitches in Time sees Bourgeois come full circle, with fabric works stitched, stuffed and manipulated into shape. The medium may be practical for an elderly woman, but in the context of her work it also feels like a move toward closure: Bourgeois’s creative abilities were first harnessed with a childhood role in her family’s tapestry restoration business.
The use of fabric and stitching plunges her back into a world of female industry and creativity. “When I was growing up, all the women in my house were using needles. I’ve always had a fascination with the needle, the magic power of the needle. The needle is used to repair the damage. It’s a claim to forgiveness.”
This association of the needle with repair implies a working towards forgiveness of her mother’s silent complicity in tolerating her father’s betrayal, but the relationship remains complicated. In an untitled work from 1996, large yellowing bones are clothes hangers for items of children’s and women’s attire. At the base of the metal stand the words Seamstress, Mistress, Distress, Stress are firmly etched.
Elsewhere, Bourgeois references her own role as mother in a return to her Femme Maison (literally housewife but also woman house) motif. In a work from 2001, a small curved house sits on the stomach of a truncated female form. The prostrate torso is held down by the structure, at the same time offering the foundation upon which it is built.
Bourgeois has consistently rejected attempts to adopt such works into the canon of feminist art, always insisting that she simply makes art about being Bourgeois. But there is no denying that her work has wide-ranging resonance. Even when the impetus is indefinable, as in a series of lithographs entitled What is the Shape of this Problem? (1999), Bourgeois succeeds in drawing in the viewer. As she explores the ups and downs of a night’s anguish, concluding with the phrase “Art is a guarantee of sanity”, we may recognise ourselves in the self-scrutiny of her words, “I pick on everyone, dead or alive”.
Remarkably, Bourgeois is still at the forefront of modern artistic expression; at the age of 92 she is one of contemporary art’s most fascinating and important voices. In 2000, she created three 30ft steel towers for the opening of Tate Modern; their titles read like a set of instructions for her approach to making art: I do, I undo, I redo.
Several of her fabric figures are anatomically detailed; the bodies in Seven in Bed (2001) are furnished with genitalia although much of it is not clearly visible.
In her references to the human body in her work, Bourgeois has often reduced it to geometrical or architectural structures. The fabric towers at IMMA are people-like but they also recall childhood constructions. They wobble slightly as the viewer passes, revealing the fact that a steel spine holds the seemingly soft structures aloft. Miniature mattresses defy gravity, turning the story of the Princess and the Pea on its head.
Dark fairytales continue in the only older artworks to appear in the show. He Disappeared into Complete Silence (1947) is a series of nine engravings in which text is accompanied by crude architectural images. They are poignant tales of unrequited love, secrets and tragedy; the brutal horror of some at odds with the matter-of-fact tone of an innocent child: “Once a man was waving to his friend from the elevator. He was laughing so much that he stuck his head out and the ceiling cut it off.”
There is much in this richly rewarding show, from the complex personal references of Oedipus (2003) to the magnificently poised power of Femme Couteau (2002), and the compelling extremes of emotion in Arch of Hysteria (2000) and Arched Figure (1999). Regardless of medium, Bourgeois has always emphasised the importance of texture and touch — “For me the only thing that matters is the tangible.”
In their resemblance to dolls, the pinkish forms of her recent years call out to be picked up, an impulse that ties back to Bourgeois’s motivations in holding one of her works for that memorable 1982 photograph. She had not been looking forward to the shoot and years later, when asked about the prop, she said: “It is not a phallus . . . The piece is called Fillette (1968). Fillette means une petite fille (a little girl). If you want to indulge in interpretation you could say that I brought a little Louise . . . It gave me security.”
It may offer protection to the artist, but in its honest embrace of complex inner turmoil, Bourgeois’s art also succeeds in evoking a strange kind of comfort and a certain recognition in those who encounter it.
Louise Bourgeois: Stitches in Time is at IMMA until February 22, 2004
