60-year retrospective of Louise Bourgeois' art at Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum

February 26, 2:49 PMDC Art Travel ExaminerMarsha Dubrow

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Louise Bourgeois, "Spider", 1997, Private Collection, Courtesy Cheim & Read, NY. Photo: Rafael Lobato   

Arachnophobic? Avoid the art exhibition that opened February 26 at DC's Hirshhorn Museum.

Or fear of Freud? For sure, skip this fascinating exhibition replete with deeply psychoanalytical works such as "Destruction of the Father", "Suicide Threat", "Arch of Hysteria", "Persistent Antagonism", "Untitled (I Have Been to Hell and Back)"... 

But oh, what you'd miss. So conquer your fears and see the 60-plus-year retrospective of more than 120 works by Louise Bourgeois, a pre-eminent figure in 20th century art. And take heart, her works also include "Art is a Guaranty of Sanity" and "Be Calm".

The exhibition, entitled simply "Louise Bourgeois", is extremely "timely in this period of social uncertainty, especially economic uncertainty. Louise Bourgeois' art is all about anxiety, inner fears about who am I, where am I going, how to deal with things that are uncertain, unhappy," Hirshhorn Senior Curator Valerie Fletcher commented at a preview.  

But Fletcher tossed out a slight disclaimer, noting that the 97-year-old Bourgeois has said that any artist who talks about their work is "probably missing the point, so you shouldn't pay any attention to them."

However, Bourgeois constantly talked about and wrote about her work, as in “Destruction of the Father / Reconstruction of the Father: Writings and Interviews, 1923-1997” (MIT Press). Bourgeois summed it up like this, “Every day you have to abandon your past or accept it and then if you cannot accept it, you become a sculptor." Clearly, acceptance was not her talent.

The artworks speak, even cry out, for themselves. Ominousness is impossible to miss, with an actual guillotine over her family home, bones, shattered glass windows, even a phallic symbol with pins stuck in it.     

But back to arachnids. Her 243-square-foot "Crouching Spider" is right outside the Hirshhorn entrance. And inside is her 14-foot "Spider", plus a smattering of smaller ones. Bourgeois is best known for her incredibly imposing spiders, which unfortunately tend to overwhelm her wide range of work that includes paintings and drawings. Often overlooked are the spiders' subtleties. The one pictured above is pregnant, a "mother image", with an old-fashioned locket holding children's pictures and an antique French perfume bottle dangling from it.

Bourgeois "thinks spiders are the exact opposite of creepy, dangerous figures. They're actually positive, protective," Fletcher explained. Bourgeois' mother ran a family business repairing 16th and 17th century tapestries, so her mother was "a master restorer, always weaving and repairing" like a spider and its webs.    

Much of the artist's work interprets her family and herself, especially the vulnerability she has always felt. She enclosed several of her works in symbolic, protective wire cages.

Bourgeois was born in France shortly before World War One broke out. Her mother almost died in 1918 from the Spanish Flu, which left her weak throughout her life. "Then Daddy dearest started fooling around with women, including Louise's live-in governess Sadie for more than a decade," Fletcher explained.

Half a century later in 1974, Bourgeois created one of her most vivid sculptures, "Destruction of the Father", composed of hacked up meat and bones under hellish red lights. The diorama's wall label includes Bourgeois' words, "Childhood fantasy of violent revenge against her domineering father...the children dismembered him. Ate him up. And so he was liquidated...the same way he had liquidated his children." 

Bourgeois moved to New York in 1938 when she married Robert Goldwater, an American art historian. She drew and painted in a Surrealist mode while rearing their three sons. To treat her depression, she turned to Freudian psychoanalysis that seemed to have more of an affect on her work than on her psyche throughout her next six decades. In 1947-1949, she created "The Blind Leading the Blind", two rows of thin, unstable, cantaloupe-colored legs bound together at the top. 

With her bronze "Spiral Woman" 1984, Bourgeois explained that spirals are "an attempt at controlling the chaos...This woman turns round and round and she doesn't know her left from her right...This is the way I feel...hanging, waiting for nobody knows what."   

Another bronze, the life-size (minus a head), contorted, obviously male figure "Arch of Hysteria" 1993 is suspended mid-air, as are several other works. Bourgeois has termed it a commentary on gender "because males are hysterical too."

Much of the meaning is in the eye of the beholder. Her "Cell" works, begun in her 80s, are large installations inside wire cages -- like jails? protective fences? Cells are also the basic unit of life, or a group of individuals, or... 

"Cell VIII" 1998 has never been shown before, Fletcher said, and "Cell (Twelve Oval Mirrors)" 1998 has never been shown in a U.S. museum. The show's only interactive piece has two chairs inside the circle of 12 mirrors and 12 chairs outside the circle. One or two people at a time can squeeze between the mirrors, rotate them, see themselves and each other reflected from many angles. Discuss amongst yourselves.

When I perched and looked along with a colleague, one art critic passed by and called out, "You look weird there -- and everywhere." He was talking to his pal and alter-ego, surely not to me.

Her newest work is "Don't Swallow Me" which Bourgeois created just last year at the age of 96.

Another of her most thought-provoking titles is "How Many Debts of Gratitude Do You Have". What a debt of gratitude we owe the Hirshhorn for presenting one of America's few retrospectives ever of Louise Bourgeois' work. And what a debt of gratitude we owe this extraordinary artist.

The Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum is the last stop on the retrospective's world tour which ends May 17. You'll be extremely grateful that you saw it.

One of the best times to see it is at the "Hirshhorn After Hours" party on Friday, March 27 from 8 P.M. to midnight. Video artists  Lumia Ensemble and Ricardo Rivera/the Klip Collective -- and DJ Sean O'Neal (a.k.a. someone else) plus DJ Tleilaxu transform the museum's plaza (beware that spider) into a "360 degree audio visual total immersion experience," the museum promises. The $18 ticket price, which must be bought in advance, includes curator-led tours of the Bourgeois exhibit and the Hirschhorn's other special exhibit, "Strange Bodies".