The echo of the morning. The “last” Louise Bourgeois talks about herself in Trondheim – World – Arte.it

World – A year after its opening, the new Norwegian museum PoMo in Trondheim is organizing a retrospective dedicated to the work of Louise Bourgeois.
The route runs from February 5 to May 31 “Louise Bourgeois – Echo of the Morning”curated by the writer Philip Larratt-Smith and organized in collaboration with the Easton Foundation, it will see a series of gouaches made by the artist in the last four years of his life in dialogue with sculptures and installations that marked a seventy-year career.
Expressing herself through a variety of means ranging from sculpture to installation, from performance to drawing, from painting to engraving, the Parisian artist physically manifested her fears to exorcise them. Thus, themes such as memory, fear, but also love and abandonment, from the more intimate drawings to large-scale installations, continue to populate his complex and celebrated work.
Louise Bourgeois, Pregnant Woman, 2008 Gouache on paper 31.1 x 25.4 cm Collection The Easton Foundation, New York Photo: Christopher Burke, © The Easton Foundation/Licensed by BONO, NO and VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY

“Created when the artist was about 95 years old – explains curator Philip Larratt-Smith – the gouaches represent his last significant corpus of drawings, yet they communicate a surprising sense of freshness, immediacy and freedom that contrasts with any idea of ​​late style. In their combination of simplicity and depth, delicacy and visceral impact, psychological density and formal beauty lie the whole mystery and power of Bourgeois’ unique artistic vision.”
In his latest works, the artist traces the most striking moments from his emotional life, the relationships and events that have defined his identity. The fear of abandonment, which accompanied her throughout her life, along with the need to stay in touch with the people closest to her, became more acute as she grew older, as she became more physically vulnerable and dependent on others. In the same way, the gouaches discuss the categories and degrees of love. In this meditation on the role of memory, desire, the cycles of life and the passage of time in Bourgeois’ late work, an iconography emerges consisting of couples, conception, pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, family and flowers, works compared to sculptures and installations that deal with the same themes. Among these, one of the famous ones Cells, rabbit skins, scrap rags for sale (2006), the sculptural tableau The reluctant child (2003) e Spider couple (2003), from his series of iconic spider sculptures. The title of the exhibition already evokes the dynamic interaction between past and present in Bourgeois’ work, taken from a text from the late series Fabrics Hours of the day (2006).

Louise Bourgeois, Maman, 2008 Gouache on paper 45.7 x 61 cm Collection The Easton Foundation, New York Photo: Christopher Burke, © The Easton Foundation/Licensed by BONO, NO and VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY

In creating these works, Bourgeois worked “wet on wet”, applying tempera to wet paper. This modus operandi meant that an element of randomness entered the end result, which for the artist represented the artist’s acceptance of the role of luck and destiny in his life. The red tempera used in the works symbolized blood, amniotic fluid and emotional intensity. This symbolic return to origins emphasizes the crucial importance of the mother-child relationship as a model for all others, while serving as an ominous portent of impending death.

To guide “Louise Bourgeois, Echo of the Morning” this concerns a publication with an introduction by the curator of the exhibition, an essay by writer and cultural critic Lynne Tillman, a portfolio of psychoanalytic writings and diaries by Bourgeois, as well as color plates and images of the installation.