+ Expand

Artist or Maker: Louise Bourgeois (b. 1911)

+ Expand

Exhibited: New York, Peridot Gallery, Louise Bourgeois, Recent Work 1947-1949: Seventeen Standing Figures in Wood, October 1949 (another example exhibited).
New York, Museum of Modern Art; Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art and Akron Art Museum, Louise Bourgeois: Retrospective, November 1982-January 1984, p. 61 (another example illustrated).
Paris and Zurich, Maeght-Lelong, Louise Bourgeois: Retrospektive 1947-1984, February-March 1985, pp. 14-15 (another example illustrated).
New York, Art for Our Sake, Inc., July-September 1987 (another example exhibited).
San Francisco, Gallery Paule Anglim, Louise Bourgeois: Sculpture
1947-1955, November-December 1987 (another example exhibited).
Chicago, Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Louise Bourgeois: Selected Works
1946-1989, September-October 1989 (another example exhibited).
Denver, Ginny Williams Gallery, Bourgeois: Four Decades, October-December 1990 (another example exhibited).
Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art, Individuals: A Selected History of Contemporary Art, December 1986-January 1988 (another example exhibited).
Cologne, Museum Ludwig, Bilderstreit, April-July 1989 (another example exhibited).
Frankfurter Kunstverein; Munich, Stadtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus; Lyon, Musée d'art contemporain; Barcelona, Fundación Tàpies; Kunstmuseum Bern and Otterlo, Kröller-Müller Museum, Louise Bourgeois: A Retrospective Exhibition, December 1989-July 1991, p. 57 (another example illustrated).
The Saint Louis Art Museum, Louise Bourgeois: The Personages, June-August 1994, pl. 20 (another example illustrated).
Kansas City, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Louise Bourgeois, July-August 1994 (another example illustrated).
Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Monterrey; Seville, Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo and Mexico City, Museo Rufino Tamayo, Louise Bourgeois, April 1995-August 1996, p. 57, pl. 15 (another example illustrated).
Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria and Sydney, Museum of Contemporary Art, Louise Bourgeois, October 1995-April 1996 (another example exhibited).
Fukuoka City, Mitsubishi-Jisho Artium and Seoul, Walker Hill Art Center, Louise Bourgeois, August-November 1995 (another example exhibited).
Hamburg, Deichtorhallen and Musée d'art contemporain de Montreal, Louise Bourgeois: Sculptures, environments, dessins 1938-1995, January-September 1996, p. 62 (another example illustrated).
Westford, University of Hartford, Harry Jack Gray Center, Gallery Joseloff, Louise Bourgeois: The Forties and Fifties, November-December 1996 (another example exhibited).
Philadelphia, Locks Gallery, Louise Bourgeois, March-April 1997 (another example exhibited).
Hanover, Dartmouth College, Jaffe-Friede & Strauss Galleries, Hanover, Louise Bourgeois, February-March 1999 (another example exhibited).
Kyunggi-Do, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Louise Bourgeois:
The Space of Memory, September-November 2000, p. 111 (another example illustrated).
New York, C&M Arts, Louise Bourgeois: The Personages, April-June 2001, pl. 11 (another example illustrated).
Champaign, University of Illinois, Krannert Art Museum; Madison Art Center and Aspen Art Museum, Louise Bourgeois: The Early Work, April 2002-February 2003, pp. 24-26 and 85 (another example illustrated).
Humlebaek, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Louise Bourgeois: Life As Art, February-June 2003 (another example illustrated).
New York, Chelsea Art Museum, Presence, February-March 2004 (another example exhibited).
Havana, Wilfredo Lam Center, Louise Bourgeois: One and Others, February-April 2005 (another example illustrated).
Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Louise Bourgeois: La Famille, March-June 2006, p. 108 (another example illustrated).
Monaco, Grimaldi Forum, New York New York, July-September 2006 (another example exhibited).
Mountainville, Storm King Art Center, Louise Bourgeois, May-November 2007, pl. 2, p. 23 (another example illustrated).
London, Tate Modern; Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou; New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art and Washington D.C., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Louise Bourgeois: Retrospective, October 2007-June 2009, p. 235 (another example illustrated).

+ Expand

Literature: R. Goldwater, What is Modern Sculpture?, New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1969, p. 96 (another example illustrated as work in progress).
R. Storr, "Intimate Geographies: The Work and Life of Louise Bourgeois" Art Press International, ed. 175, December 1992, p. E4 (another example illustrated).
C. Haenlein, ed., Louise Bourgeois Sculptures and Installations, Hannover, 1994, pl. 10 (another example illustrated).
C. Flohic, and D. Dobbels. Ninety, Charenton-le-Pont Cedex, France, 1994, p. 23, no. 15 (another example illustrated).
M.-L. Bernadac, Louise Bourgeois, Paris, 1996, p. 59 (another example illustrated).
T. Amano, Louise Bourgeois: Homesickness, Yokohama Museum of Art, Tokyo, 1997, p. 57 (another example illustrated).
L. Bourgeois, "La Autoexpresion Es Sagrada Y Fatal," Artey Parte, no. 23, November 1999, p. 61 (another example illustrated).
A. Jahn, Louise Bourgeois: Subversionen Des Körpers, Berlin, 1999, p. 108 (another example illustrated).
T. Kellein, Louise Bourgeois, exh. cat., Kunsthalle Bielefeld, 1999, p. 8 (another example illustrated).
M. Nixon and J. Bird, ed., Oxford Art Journal, vol. 22, no. 2, 1999, p. 9 (another example illustrated).
J. Landay, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston: Visitor Guide, 2000, pl. 16.2 (another example illustrated).
P. Galassi, R. Storr, and A. Umland, Making Choices, exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2000, p. 204 (another example illustrated).
J.G. Castro, "Louise Bourgeois: Turning Myths Inside Out, " Sculpture Magazine, vol. 20, no. 1, January/February 2001, p. 20 (another example illustrated; also illustrated on the cover).
R. Storr, P. Herkenhoff and A. Schwartzman. Louise Bourgeois, London, 2003, p. 55 (another example illustrated).
R. Diez, "Louise Bourgeois: La rivoluzione continua," ARTE, February 2003, p. 114 (another example illustrated).
E. Landau, Reading Abstract Expressionism: Context and Critique, London, 2005, fig. 18 (another example illustrated).
M. Nixon, Fantastic Reality: Louise Bourgeois and a Story of Modern Art, London, 2005, p. 162 (another example illustrated).
T. Kellein, "Market File: Louise Bourgeois," Art & Auction, July 2006, pp. 59-60 (another example illustrated).
G. Celant and L. Dennison, New York, New York: Fifty Years of Art, Architecture, Cinema, Performance and Video, Milan, 2006, p. 66 (another example illustrated).
M.-L. Bernadac, Louise Bourgeois, Paris, 2006, p. 6 (another example illustrated).
A. Greene, Isamu Noguchi: A Sculpture for Sculpture, The Lillie and Hugh Roy Cullen Sculpture Garden, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2006, p. 63 (another example illustrated in detail).

+ Expand

Notes: Quarantania is a deeply personal art work for Bourgeois, one which assimilates a variety of themes the artist returned to over the course of her career. The five figures represented here refer to both her nuclear families: that of her childhood and later, the family she began in 1938 when she married art historian and expert on primitive art, Robert Goldwater. Bourgeois has chosen not to speak extensively about her husband's influence on her work. Still, taken individually, each of the smooth, elongated figures in this piece evokes the representative totems of African and Oceanic art. So while the organic forms of surrealists like Miro and Gorky formally influenced Bourgeois, she possibly concieved Quarantania as serving an enigmatic, ritualistic function, which sets her work apart, towards the "objecthood" of minimalist sculpture.

Indeed, Bourgeois originally created the elements in Quarantania to function as individual items, discrete, symbolic. The figures in this piece are part of the Personages series. She began creating them in mourning, as surrogates for each of the loved ones she had left in occupied Paris when she immigrated to New York in 1938. Bourgeois explains: "I was missing certain people that I had left behind. It was a tangible way of re-creating a missed past" (Susi Bloch, "Interview with Louise Bourgeois," Art Journal, Vol. 23, no. 4, Summer 1976, pp 370-3, quoted in N. Mignon, "Louise Bourgeois: Reconstructing the Past," Louise Bourgeois, London, 2007. p.228).

For their first exhibition at the Peridot gallery in 1949, each Personage was displayed as a stand-alone figure, either on its own, or arranged against others in loose "social" groups. At the Peridot show, the works' size and anthropomorphism created a haunting presence. This clan-like effect was exaggerated later on, when in 1953, Bourgeois revisited the work to unite the five figures on a single base, finalizing Quarantania's form, and then once again in 1986, when she ratified the shape by casting it in bronze.

Arranged together, the five figures project a powerful, familial dynamic. Leaning towards each other, they demonstrate their interdependence and autonomy from the outside world, while in their likeness the group asserts a unified front and difference. However, as in all of Bourgeois's works, Quarantania expresses a duality wherein those very same familial themes of intimacy and dependence also project a darker sense of claustrophobia and enclosure. We can see the grouping as the artist's family portrait, with the four phallic figures as Goldwater and Bourgeois' three sons, while the central figure, holding packages, is the artist herself. Writing in her diary, Bourgeois explains that the work was inspired by her experience in the domestic realm: "I had children around my waist. This is the origin of the Quarantania. I was carrying my packages" (conversation with Jerry Gorovoy, Gorovy and Tilkin, Louise Bourgeois: Memory and Architecture, exh. cat., Museo Nacional de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, 1999, quoted in Mignon, p. 234). So while the group in one sense is protecting her, the permanent bond of family can also feel like a burden. In his 1969 essay "What is Modern Sculpture?" published by the Museum of Modern Art, Goldwater assesses the dark contradictions in his wife's work: "Here is a human group, its members alike but various, leaning toward one another in an intensity of feeling that unites them even at it leaves each one silent and alone" (R. Goldwater, p. 97, quoted in J. Helfenstein Louise Bourgeois: The Early Works, Krannert Art Museum, Illinois, 2002, p. 24).

Bourgeois has continued to explore combining personal history and an anthropological social dynamic. We can see this theme even in the most recent fabric works, like Seven in Bed (2001) which shows seven human bodies so interdependent that they have been literally knit together. In an early artists' statement, she writes, "My work grows from the duel between the isolated individual and the shared awareness of the group...in my most recent work these relations become clearer and more intimate. Now the single work has its own complex of parts, each of which is similar yet different from the others. But there is still the feeling with which I began-the drama of one among many." (L. Bourgeois, "Artists' Statement", Design Quarterly, no. 30. 18, The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 1954, quoted in Helfenstein, p.34).