.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
拍品專文
Emanating a powerful presence, Untitled is demonstrative of the rich visual idiom that characterized Louise Bourgeois’ storied career. A disembodied head and neck, hand-sewn from patches of flesh-pink woollen fabric has been confined to a glass vitrine raised on steel legs. The tactile, hand-stitched cloth head, bearing an enigmatic expression that suggests something is about to be said, belies its austere environment to create an entirely unique work that interweaves intimacy with formality, personal history with traditional sculptural conventions and skilled artistry with conceptual resonance.
Untitled forms part of a series of sculptures that Bourgeois made in the early years of the millennium that featured individual fabric heads encased within steel, aluminium and wooden structures, designed to mimic museum-display cases. As she entered her ninth decade, Bourgeois was gathering ever more acclaim; in 2000 (the year of the present work), she was chosen for the inaugural exhibition at Tate Modern, which featured her monumental spider sculpture, Maman.
Throughout her life, Bourgeois retained clothes and other domestic textiles such as bedlinen, tablecloths and napkins. From the mid-nineties, she began to use these personal items within her art, cutting them up and stitching them back together in new configurations. The bandage-like assemblage of fabric in Untitled hints at the way that sewing, for Bourgeois, was an act of repair. A potent opportunity to address past trauma, it became a key impetus in her later work. In a photo essay published to coincide with her major retrospective in 1982 at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the first the institution had offered a woman, she explained, “Every day you have to abandon your past or accept it, and then if you cannot accept it you become a sculptor.” (L. Bourgeois, quoted in J. Acocella, “The Spider’s Web”, The New Yorker, 4th February 2002.)
Fabric was imbued with intense psychological significance for Bourgeois. Born in Paris in 1911, she was raised in a family whose livelihood depended on textiles. Her father owned a gallery that sold antique tapestries, while her mother repaired them. From the age of ten, Bourgeois helped the family business by drawing in sections of the tapestries that were missing or that had disintegrated over time. As a result, she came to associate the act of sewing with reparation, femininity and her mother. “All the women in my house used needles,” she has said. “I’ve always had a fascination with the needle, the magic power of the needle. The needle is used to repair damage. It’s a claim to forgiveness. It is never aggressive, it’s not a pin” (Louise Bourgeois cited in Robert Storr, Intimate Geometries: The Art and Life of Louise Bourgeois, London, 2016, p. 526). Interweaving the literal and metaphorical strands of her life, Bourgeois boldly confronted her past in these potent final works.
Untitled forms part of a series of sculptures that Bourgeois made in the early years of the millennium that featured individual fabric heads encased within steel, aluminium and wooden structures, designed to mimic museum-display cases. As she entered her ninth decade, Bourgeois was gathering ever more acclaim; in 2000 (the year of the present work), she was chosen for the inaugural exhibition at Tate Modern, which featured her monumental spider sculpture, Maman.
Throughout her life, Bourgeois retained clothes and other domestic textiles such as bedlinen, tablecloths and napkins. From the mid-nineties, she began to use these personal items within her art, cutting them up and stitching them back together in new configurations. The bandage-like assemblage of fabric in Untitled hints at the way that sewing, for Bourgeois, was an act of repair. A potent opportunity to address past trauma, it became a key impetus in her later work. In a photo essay published to coincide with her major retrospective in 1982 at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the first the institution had offered a woman, she explained, “Every day you have to abandon your past or accept it, and then if you cannot accept it you become a sculptor.” (L. Bourgeois, quoted in J. Acocella, “The Spider’s Web”, The New Yorker, 4th February 2002.)
Fabric was imbued with intense psychological significance for Bourgeois. Born in Paris in 1911, she was raised in a family whose livelihood depended on textiles. Her father owned a gallery that sold antique tapestries, while her mother repaired them. From the age of ten, Bourgeois helped the family business by drawing in sections of the tapestries that were missing or that had disintegrated over time. As a result, she came to associate the act of sewing with reparation, femininity and her mother. “All the women in my house used needles,” she has said. “I’ve always had a fascination with the needle, the magic power of the needle. The needle is used to repair damage. It’s a claim to forgiveness. It is never aggressive, it’s not a pin” (Louise Bourgeois cited in Robert Storr, Intimate Geometries: The Art and Life of Louise Bourgeois, London, 2016, p. 526). Interweaving the literal and metaphorical strands of her life, Bourgeois boldly confronted her past in these potent final works.