Went to see the Louise Bourgeois exhibit at the Guggenheim with an artist friend today. It blew me away. I particularly loved a sculpture called Spiral Woman, which is suspended from the ceiling. Here’s the description:
In a hybridized form that recalls the imagery of Bourgeois’s Femme Maison works, a small bronze figure is trapped within a clutching spiral and suspended above a dark slate disc positioned on the floor below. As the woman dangles in midair, there is a sense of suspended animation. Is she struggling to free herself? Or is the embrace of the spiral saving her from tumbling into the void below? Although all of Bourgeois’s work can be seen as a continual excavation of the self, she has singled out this work in particular as a self-portrait, explaining, “She hangs up in the air. She turns around and she doesn’t know her left from her right. Who do you think it represents? It represents Louise. This is the way I feel . . .”
Brilliant stuff.
