She saw art as a form of therapy. Louise Bourgeois was well acquainted with the psychoanalytic concepts, which inspired and have often been used to understand his work. In New York, a new exhibition at Jewish Museum is interested in its ambivalent relationship with Freudian psychoanalysis.
The curator, Philip Larratt-Smith, has assembled a fifty works retracing the entire career of the French artist for “Louise Bourgeois, Freud’s Daughter“. Among them are his wooden totem figures better known as his “characters“, and its facilities”The Destruction of the Father“and”Dangerous passage“.
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Visitors to the Jewish Museum can also experience a selection of psychoanalytic writings by Bourgeois, most of which are presented to the public for the first time. The French plastic artist and sculptor followed a psychoanalysis for more than 30 years, first with Dr. Leonard Cammer and then with her colleague Dr. Henry Lowenfeld. Louise Bourgeois produced a detailed file of his analysis and its effects over all these years.
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Contribute to psychoanalysis
These writings were found in the artist’s home in Chelsea in 2004 and in 2010, shortly after his death at the age of 98s. If they give an overview of the psychological states of Louise Bourgeois, they also represent “an original contribution to the field of psychoanalysis“, especially with regard to female sexuality and the nature of the artist. This is why Philip Larratt-Smith decided to make it the basis of the exhibition”Louise Bourgeois, Freud’s Daughter“.
As the Jewish Museum explains, their existence questions because they are “in contradiction with the fact that Louise Bourgeois was wary of words and did not believe in healing by talking“. “She always maintained that making art gave him access to his unconscious, and that his art did not require any exegesis or verbal defense. Because if the writings shed light on the link between his psychic life and his forms, they do not explain his art, any more than his art illustrates the writings. Rather, they constitute a parallel body of work that has sometimes taken the place of its visual production.“, he adds.
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Art lovers will be able to form their own opinion on the subject until September 12th, date on which ends “Louise Bourgeois, Freud’s Daughter“. For those unable to travel to New York, the Jewish Museum posted the exhibit’s audio guide online.
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