Louise Bourgeois: Sleepwalking
Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown
November 24, 2001 - August 25, 2002
“I’m in a state of sleepwalking which has something to do with the impression I have of not being able to focus my attention on anything for long. At the same time my brain is tremendously active. I have all sorts of ideas and plans in my head and I’m all set to write, or to draw--anything...”- Louise Bourgeois, Diary entry, November 19, 1944
Louise Bourgeois has always had an abundance of ideas and plans in her head, and has realized hundreds of them over the course of seven decades. With the recent commission of Eyes, 2001, a monumental, permanent, outdoor sculpture by this influential artist, the museum has brought into its galleries a select sampling of her artwork to compliment and provide a context for the sculpture outside. This selection includes, twenty drawings, six sculptures, a photograph of the artist from 1982 by Robert Mapplethorpe, and an audio track titled, Otte from 1995 in which Bourgeois sings a song she wrote in her native French.
Sleepwalking touches on a range of motifs and themes within Louise Bourgeois’ prolific body of work, including that of the “insomnia drawings,” intimate works, primarily in ink on paper, that have aided the artist through an ongoing battle with sleeplessness. Drawings of this nature, such as the 1998 Untitled (I Can or Will Fall Asleep), together with the sculptures in the exhibition, provide a glimpse into her working method. As indicated in her diary entry from 1944 above, Louise Bourgeois is in a constant flux of production, moving effortlessly between materials and motifs, between small works and large public installations. For example, Spider II, 1995, included in the exhibition, is a smaller, yet no less powerful, prototype for Louise Bourgeois’ massive public installation, Maman and two smaller Spiders, recently on view at Rockefeller Center in NYC. While her work has undergone dramatic formal changes over the years she has remained loyal to a handful of visual and psychological subjects: family groups, personal spaces and the fragmented human form.
Louise Bourgeois began her career as a painter and print-maker but sculpture has been her dominant medium since the late 1940s. Though her work shared some stylistic attributes with popular art movements such as Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism, because of her gender and her intentionally idiosyncratic style, she remained on the fringes of these groups. Her modest public persona was exploded by the critically acclaimed 1982 MoMA retrospective, Louise Bourgeois, the first of its kind for a woman artist. She has since received many prestigious awards and honors including the first Lifetime Achievement Award given by the Sculpture Center, Washington DC in 1991; distinction as the United States representative at the 1993 Venice Biennale; and the National Medal of the Arts at the White House in 1997. In recent years, she has completed a number of large-scale installations and commissioned public works, including the museum’s 75th anniversary sculpture, Eyes, 2001 located on the front lawn and entrance courtyard.
Louise Bourgeois: Sleepwalking was organized by Abigail Guay, Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art ‘02 with Lisa Dorin Curatorial and Programs Assistant.
WILLIAMS COLLEGE MUSEUM OF ART - WCMA
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