The books of Louise Bourgeois

At the age of 91 years, Louise Bourgeois created Ode a L'Oubli, (Ode to Forgetting),  a book of 35 fabric pages made from her own saved clothing.    (2002)  

In the catalog for the 2022 exhibition, Louise Bourgeois: The Woven Child, Bourgeois' books are shown as grids so that we can see all the pages at one time.  Each of Louise’s pages is about 11 x 12 inches.  If you want to see how this book looks when it is closed, or opened page by page, go to this link:  MOMA.  

In 2004, she made another book, The Woven Child

All of the pages in The Woven Child were woven from strips of fabric.

Within the grid of straight weave, she depicted her favourite motifs.  The hand, the house, the female body, the pregnant body, the human head.

She used her own clothing to make the pages, saved for decades.

Ode a la Bievre was made in 2007, when the artist was 96 years old.  It is about the river that she grew up on in France.

She made The Fragile in 2007 as well.  Not a book but a suite of drawings/paintings relating to mother/child ideas of the artist.  She said that her mother was like a spider, always able to repair the web, a strong and yet vulnerable being.  One of Bourgeois most famous works is her set of several steel spiders, made in many versions and stand as large outdoor sculptures outside of the world's great art museums.  See the Guggenheim spider at this link.

Eugenie Grandet 2009

A suite of embroidered illustrations that interpret the main female character in the novel by Honore Balzac, which was about a young woman named Eugenie who was not able to be romantically fulfilled because of her tyrannical father.  Read more about it and about why Louise Bourgeois wanted to make this suite of embroideries in this Guardian article from 2011.  

Louise Bourgeois died in 2010, at the age of 99.   That she carried on creating original work until the end is very inspiring for all of us.  The work she made in her 80's and 90's is uplifting, personal, and made from memory cloth.  It is inspiring for anyone who works with stitch.  I have studied her work for years, and have written about her many times on this blog (10 times!  click here) and also twice on the Modernist Aesthetic blog.   

The newest post on modernist aesthetic is Louise Bourgeois: The Woven Child. 

I keep journals

Sometimes, we think that things we say or think are important.   

They are.  

It's worth it to think and feel and remember.

Not worth a lot of money, but worth a lot of SELF.

A notebook / scrap book / is a way to keep a conversation going with the inner inner.

It's a way to keep the self open and trusting and aware.

I spend time every day on my journal.

It's not a waste of time. 

I am worth it.  

I continue learning.  

I study and take notes

 

The above sketch is of one of Louise Bourgeois' sewn head sculptures.

When I come across old family photos I save them.   

I also save things I find in old journals like this poem by Louise Rogers.

At the front of every journal, I list the books I am reading and give a wee review.

I tape the year on the spine 

Every morning I start a new chapter with the day's date.  

You can't think "my life is more important than the work"   

You have to think that the work is paramount.

Adventurous

One new thing after another

say "what do I like?"

      "what do I want?"

Find out exactly what you want in life.

To progress in life you must give up the things that you do not like.

When you go along with others you are not really living your life.

Find your way.

Happiness is being on the beam with life.

Agnes Martin  said this and I copied it and found it and taped it.

There is a two minute video of me speaking about this on my vimeo account, click here. 

Louise Bourgeois visited me

Louise Bourgeois kept an extraordinary body of notes and diaries that interweave with her artwork.

Her diary embodied her relationship with the unknown
"like a lake that one knows but very little"  LB

"I am passionately going somewhere, but I'm not sure where"  LB

She focuses on the concept of reparation.

She repaired antique tapestries in her youth.
As an adult, she needed to repair her inner world.

The process of reparation entails finding internal 'parents' to contain and detoxify the anxiety she was feeling, and return it to the inner child in a way that it could be understood and thought about.

This "container/contained" is Louise's artwork.

She said that art is a guaranty of sanity many times.  See here, here, and here for examples.

Art is a guaranty of sanity "not because troubles are cast away,
but because we learn to stand more" she wrote in her journal.

"Pins are weapons" Louise said, "but needles are tools of reparation".

Images in this post are of a worn out whole cloth quilt (white cotton with blue thread)
that has been repaired.  I'm not sure if it's finished but I am folding it up for a while.

The text is from an essay I read the other day about Louise Bourgeois in this book.

a work in progress

Easily inspired.

I got this quilt top out last week to finish up with batt and backing but changed my mind.

All I really love is the central pinwheel square.

So I removed all the red and stitched it back together much simpler.

In my work I use the same methods again and again,
but each whirl around the spiral gets me closer to my truth
as I do, undo, re-do
(Louise Bourgeois' mantra)

yes, there is a loss of what I knew before
but it's important also to lose what I think I know now

because in order to create something new it is necessary to enter into the unknown

be alert
don't try too hard
go slow  (Agnes Martin's mantra)

I've come back to dots.

I try to make cloths that excite my eye and touch my emotions

it seems to take courage

We are always afraid of falling.  L.B.

We are not ashamed of our helplessness

No one really wants to have perfection - we dream about perfection

 I am not what I am.  I am what I do with my hands

A work of art doesn't need to be explained.  If it doesn't touch you, then I have failed.


All text in this post from art 21 video interview with Louise Bourgeois. (including the title)
The images are from July.   The quilt shown in them has since been undone and now I am re-doing it for that exhibition in October.

I have been hunkered down with my needle and hoop for the months of August and September.  I am so focused on finishing up the large pieces for this show that I feel my self becoming lost.  And I've started to think that in the big picture of our world, an exhibition of my quilts is only a speck.

I do.  I un do.  I re-do.  Louise Bourgeois
Art is a guarantee of sanity.  Louise Bourgeois

tangled brain

I had this small red journal at the cottage.
Began it July 12 in Liverpool, and finished it August 18 at the family cottage.

but since I stayed at the cottage for another eleven days,
I had to find spaces in that little red book to keep my thoughts and sketches.

It became so crowded and tangled in there that I couldn't think.

I could not think!
and thought is the 6th sense, Boetti says.

My journals encourage the 6th sense in me.
They give me a place to listen to my self but more than that....
They encourage me to think.

 My brain became so tangled when I didn't have enough empty pages.

Louise Bourgeois said this.
I wrote it into the red journal twice.  Once July 24.  Again August 18.

I had written Tracey Emin's comment about solitude on July 19.

Solitude is like a new blank journal for me.
It gives me space to think.

I am not afraid

So far this month, I've been in my studio every day.
I drive the 20 minutes into town, carry my bags up the stairs, open the door, hang up my coat, sit down at my big table and look at the work I did the day before.

Then, before doing anything new, I spend twenty minutes or so centering myself by re-reading an old journal.  Occasionally there are self sketches in them, like the one above when three chicks had flown, and the youngest remained.

And then, I stitch.  I am working on two pieces at the studio that are a break from the repetitive and endless eyelets  that  fill the mornings and nights at home.   Shown here is the piece inspired by Louise Bourgeois' journal entry of 1986.