Louise Bourgeois: The Locus of Memory, Works 1982 - 1993

Examines the sculptor's feminist and subversive works that often mingle human and animal forms

Bourgeois, now 83, has been making sculptures for more than five decades, mostly in benign obscurity. She has acknowledged the fact that her work was shown but not sold by stating, "My image remained my own, and I am very grateful for that. I worked in peace for forty years. The production of my work had nothing to do with the selling of it." Kotik, curator of contemporary art at the Brooklyn Museum, succinctly and insightfully surveys Bourgeois' life and identifies Bourgeois' themes as "anxiety, alienation, love, identity, sex, and death." These universal obsessions inspired Bourgeois to evolve a potent lexicon of suggestive organic forms that mingle male and female, human and animal. Then, in 1982, the Museum of Modern Art mounted a retrospective of Bourgeois' distinctively feminist and even subversive work. This milestone seems to have been a catalyst for Bourgeois, who is experiencing her most intense and productive era. The vital, innovative, provocative, and psychologically sophisticated works displayed in this volume, especially the "lairs" and "cells," were all made in the last 11 years, and they are the creations of a major artist in her prime. Donna Seaman