Art21, Inc. 2003
She's having a retrospective of the longest career of a still-living artist ever. She has worked continuously as an artist since 1923, when at 12 years old, she drew tapestry cartoons for her parent's tapestry repair business. She is now 96, and in the last 10 years has made some of the most monumental work of her life. She didn't become well-known until she was in her 60's. She has made work that has mutated through different materials and processes, scales and surfaces, images and shapes, retaining an intellectual, spiritual, and visceral consistency while constantly evolving and changing.
" The Louise Bourgeois retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum includes this untitled 2004 hanging piece. Holland Cotter writes: Spirals abound in Louise Bourgeois’s art. She says they make her think of control and freedom, and of strangling someone. So it’s perfect that her retrospective, seen in London and Paris, is now in the looping rotunda of the Guggenheim Museum. It looks great there, clean but organic – fecund, tumid, hands-on -- and unclassically classical. Photo: Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times"
"A work of art doesn't have to be explained," she says. "If you do not have any feeling about this, I cannot explain it to you. If this doesn't touch you, I have failed."
Defiance (Le Défi), 1991"As she wrote in 1988, in an essay on her piece "The Sail," the work speaks for itself: "Whatever the artist says about it is like an apology, it is not necessary." (Then she went on to discuss the motivations behind "The Sail" for four pages.)" Joan Acocella, The New Yorker, February 4, 2002
Exhibition at Guggenheim
NYT Review of Guggenheim Retrospective
NYT Slideshow
Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, The Mistress and The Tangerine (Documentary)
Art21, PBS (documentary, videos, slideshows, interviews)
The Spider’s Web: Louise Bourgeois and her art. Joan Acocella, The New Yorker, February 4, 2002
Wikipedia Entry
Artcyclopedia
