Louise Bourgeois – Pioneer of Installation Art

What exactly is an installation?

The technician would say:

A combination of different technical elements in a way that enables the created whole to perform certain functions.”.

The artist sees it similarly; for him, too, an installation combines a wide variety of elements.

The installation artist often began with visual arts, but then developed from two-dimensional to three-dimensional space, often initially as a classical sculptor. Unlike a sculptor, however, he no longer wants to be limited by a material and its possible volumes; he often no longer wants to create artworks that are independent of their spatial environment.

In visual art, installations occupy as much space as the artist deems necessary, often reaching dimensions that tie them to a specific location. Frequently, this location, space, or situation is incorporated into the artwork; the surrounding space becomes part of this three-dimensional art.

For an artist, a work only becomes an artistic installation when the individual parts combine to form an ensemble with its own artistic statement.

It is usually very advantageous for the artist that he is not limited to colors or to materials such as clay, stone, or metal in his three-dimensional representation. Rather, the sculptures created by Louise Bourgeois in a spatial context are characterized by a great willingness to experiment in the selection of the materials used.

Therefore, artistic installations are usually very interesting and multifaceted, and they can also be incredibly witty, like many of the installations Louise Bourgeois . Born on December 25, 1911, Louise Bourgeois was among the first female artists to develop the mental freedom to express herself through installations.

Louise Bourgeois – Development and brief biography

The artist grew up in Choisy-le Roi near Paris, in a family that offered her creative activity in the field of arts and crafts with a gallery for historical textiles and an attached restoration workshop.

Otherwise, her childhood was less than pleasant; her despotic father had no use for female offspring, only spoke to little Louise to mock her, and cheated on Louise's mother in front of her. During meals, Louise Bourgeois would shape small sculptures of her father out of bread, which she would then gleefully destroy.

This constant and creative work, along with helping out in her parents' workshop, led Louise Bourgeois to pursue an artistic career after a brief period studying mathematics at the Sorbonne. She moved to Paris and acquired a comprehensive artistic education. Alongside travels to Scandinavia and Russia, Bourgeois attended the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, the Académie Ranson, the Académie Julian, and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière (artist-run institutions) between 1932 and 1938. During this time, Bourgeois also participated in group exhibitions and ran her own small gallery.

She also attended art history seminars, where she met and fell in love with the art historian Robert Goldwater; they married in 1937. In 1938, they moved to New York, where Goldwater had received a teaching position. They also adopted their son Michel in 1940 and had a son, Jean-Louis, naturally that same year, followed by their son Alain in 1941.

Alongside raising her children, Bourgeois continued her studies at the Art Students League, and even without any advertising, her works quickly gained recognition in New York. After her first graphic works were exhibited in 1930, her first solo exhibition of paintings took place in 1945 at the Berta Schaefer Gallery.

I am what I do – Louise Bourgeois

In the mid-1940s, Bourgeois devoted herself entirely to sculpture ; the new works were exhibited in New York in 1949 and 1950, while the politically left-leaning artist, along with other exiled European artists, was (without consequence) charged with “un-American activities”.

Although Bourgeois is highly regarded by her fellow artists, she only comes back into the public eye at the end of the 1970s, when her sculptures from 1941 to 1953 are exhibited in 1979 and the sculptures created up to 1970 are shown in an exhibition in 1980, both in New York.

Until then, that is, until she was almost 70 years old, Bourgeois remained almost unnoticed internationally, until the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York dedicated a retrospective to her in 1982.

This exhibition, which also traveled to Chicago (Illinois), Houston (Texas), and Akron (Ohio), finally initiated the wider dissemination of Bourgeois's work. First, her artworks were shown in many more American museums, and from the late 1980s onward, her works could be seen in various European countries.

In 1992, Bourgeois' work was featured at documenta IX, in 1993 at the Venice Biennale, in 1994 the Kestner Society in Hanover exhibited her work, and in 1996 another major retrospective took place at the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg.

In 1999, the artist's work was exhibited at the Kunsthalle Bielefeld, and her lifetime achievements were also recognized by the Japan Art Association awarding her the “Nobel Prize of Art” , the Praemium Imperiale.

This was followed by exhibitions in Melbourne (International Biennial 1999), at documenta XI 2002, at the Berlin Academy of Arts 2003, at the Irish Museum of Modern Art Dublin 2003/04 and in many other cities.

Late recognition for her avant-garde work

Since 2005, Bourgeois has consistently ranked among the top dozen artists in the international art world. In 2007, Tate Modern in London held a retrospective to mark the artist's 95th birthday. During her lifetime, as she passed away in 2010 at the age of 98, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and the National Gallery in Berlin also presented exhibitions dedicated to her work. Exhibitions commemorating her 100th birthday were held in Switzerland and Hamburg in 2012.

The belated recognition finally underlines the importance of her work; the pioneer of installation art has used an incredibly wide variety of materials and techniques and created a large number of interesting works.

bronze created by the artist in a public space or museum