SHE BITES | May 1st 2008

Crouching Spider, 2003, Bronze patin au nitrate d'argent et acier inoxydable, Vue au Centre Pompidou, Forum, © Georges Meguerditchian, Centre Pompidou, 2008

A Louise Bourgeois retrospective at the Centre Pompidou pays tribute to a lifetime of haunting beauty. Jessica Ferri meanders through this provocative attic of the subconscious ...

Special to MORE INTELLIGENT LIFE

A few weeks ago I went to the Centre Pompidou in Paris to see the Louise Bourgeois retrospective (which is travelling to New York's Guggenheim this summer). I'll admit that I didn't really know what to expect from the 96-year-old (and still kicking) artist. Upon entering the show, I was confronted with a replica of the artist's childhood home in a metal cage, with a guillotine hanging above the entry. A chilling introduction.

Bourgeois works in an array of media--ceramic, canvas, wood, metal, iron, cloth, paint, bronze and more. She is best known for her public-space pieces, grand-scale sculptures of spiders so large they must rest outside. These are compelling, haunting sights. It is as if Bourgeois is taking our darkest and most shame-filled secrets, and then blowing them up into monsters that prey the earth.

She has a habit of prying out private thoughts and shoving them into the glare of the sun. She tends towards sexualised, organic shapes, and then lines them up on wooden blocks the size of coffee tables.

The spider, weaving her web, stands as the gatekeeper to her work. She reappears frequently; the ultimate domestic power-house, the spider's web is both home and weapon. In interviews, Bourgeois explains that it is a symbol of her best friend, her mother. As the family business was tapestry repair, the spider is perhaps logical, but also a compelling symbol of the trappings of domesticity.

The Pompidou exhibition is a trip through the attic of her subconscious, filled with memories of old lovers, childhood dramas and, perhaps most frighteningly, traumas to come. Bourgeois illustrates these spaces in pieces she calls "Les Cellules." The cells are full-scale rooms that house a number of objects, each with a different theme. Like long-lost artefacts from a childhood bedroom, the items in these rooms each hold a different meaning, memory, emotion.

The rooms are not open in the exhibit, but closed off, requiring spectators to peer in, as if spying on something illicit. In this way, the cells are different from the rest of Bourgeois's work--their secrets are hidden, shameful and mysterious.

Walking through, I quietly observed the other patrons of the museum. No one seemed to flinch at the grisly work on display. Nary a gawk greeted "La Destruction du père," Bourgeois's cave of severed breasts and penises, drowned in blood-red light. My fellow spectators could have just as easily been looking at Monet's lily pads. Fathers pointed out highlights to their young children. Women in their 70s and 80s remarked, "Ooh, I like that," pointing to a decapitated, castrated ceramic dog. The general sense of ease shows the artist's skill in blending the deep, dark wounds of psychosexual drama with something more prosaic and accessible. Viewers were intrigued, engaged.

But I worry about how her work will be received in the States. I can hear it already (with an accompanying roll of the eyes): "Oh Bourgeois, that feminist artist with the bronze dicks."

I was not heartened by the prim approach of New York's Metropolitan Museum in its exhibition of work by Gustave Courbet, a French 19th-century Realist painter. The show is well executed and worth seeing, but I was disappointed by the decision to place Courbet's admittedly racy painting, "The Origin of the World", behind a partition. Visitors must walk behind a freestanding wall to view it. There, in that more intimate space, is Courbet's famous image of a vagina. I had seen reproductions of the painting, but in person it is breathtaking. Courbet's work tends to objectify women, but this painting--as the title coyly implies--suggests a deep respect. Curators presumably hid the painting in deference to families with children. But the censorship--in 2008, no less--seemed prudish. (Indeed, where are the fig leaves concealing the penises in the Greek and Roman galleries? Thankfully, there are none.) 

At Centre Pompidou, Bourgeois's work was splayed out in the open, without disclaimers. There were no partitions; the provocation is largely the point. 

This is why Louise Bourgeois is so important--the strength and courage of her pieces cannot be ignored. Her art exposes something raw, and we are unable (and unwilling) to cover up its unpleasant bits. Nothing to be ashamed about there.

(Jessica Ferri works at Farrar, Straus and Giroux and is the author of the blog Dilettantsia)

Cumul I, 1969, marble, wood, 57 x 127 x 122 cm, Centre Pompidou, MNAM, Paris, Photo RMN Philippe Migeat, Centre Pompidou © Louise Bourgeois

Spider, 1997, steel, tapestry, wood, glass, fabric, rubber, money, gold and bone, 445 x 665.4 x 518 cm, Private collection, courtesy Cheim & Read, New York, Photo: Frédéric Delpech © Louise Bourgeois