NEW YORK – As striking as the sculptures are, you will notice as you browse “Louise Bourgeois: Freud’s Daughter” on the second floor of the Jewish Museum in New York only in small frames – sometimes in front of massive and disturbing works of mixed media , sometimes alongside more compressed and fanciful works – there are missives that are halfway between reportage and confession.
These 80 pieces, never before seen in the United States, are psychoanalytic writings of Bourgeois – essentially introspective homework given by his shrink.
The French-born artist, who died in 2010 at the age of 98, has spent most of her career in New York. In 1951, she entered analysis with Dr. Leonard Cammer, a giant of mid-century American psychiatry, and then with Dr. Henry Lowenfeld, whom she saw for 30 years. Lowenfeld was a Sigmund Freud follower, so, no, you’re not crazy if you look at some of the 40 pieces put together in this new exhibit and think, “My God, that’s supposed to be his father’s penis, is not it ? “
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Bourgeois was not Jewish, but her husband, professor and art collector Robert Goldwater was, and at least one of her living sons identifies himself as such. Freud, of course, was a Jew. That was enough for the Jewish Museum, which houses an exceptional collection of Judaica, as well as rotating galleries of historic and modern art – either by Jews or relating to the Jewish experience – in the magnificent Warburg mansion on the Upper East Side. of Manhattan.
A typewritten sheet by Louise Bourgeois, now displayed in the Jewish Museum in New York. (Credit: The Easton Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society, New York)
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And that was also enough for me.
The exhibition is now open and will remain until September 12, and I recommend it as a summer destination for anyone looking for something quirky or disturbing.
I know that might not be what needs to be said about great art, but the truth is, it’s not just an exhibit in a museum, but rather a house of horrors.
Take your teenagers there and watch them panic in front of a huge hanging scrotum (that’s it, right?), Next to a painting evoking a breast and sheep bones bathed in red light that would make Dario Argento tremble.
Bourgeois’ most famous works, those nightmarish spiders bristling with woodpeckers, are not on display – but there is a small one hidden in the corner of one of the largest of the 40 pieces in the exhibition: “Dangerous Passage From 1997. As my eyes scanned the strange collection of objects inside a huge metal cage, I winced at the grim spectacle of false limbs, fluttering wooden chairs, strange glass globes filled with things resembling snails and electric chair. It was then that I gasped when I saw the horrible arachnid so close to my foot.
Get me out of here, I thought.
But where was I exactly? Curator Philip Larratt-Smith, who is currently publishing a book of Bourgeois’s psychoanalytic writings with Princeton University Press, is surely trying to recreate the anguishes in the mind of this troubled woman.
He tells me that she struggled with Freud’s theories over the years, and was even known for making jokes about psychoanalysis, but ultimately seemed very dedicated to the process.
View of the installation: “Louise Bourgeois, Freud’s daughter” at the Jewish Museum in New York. (Credit: Ron Amstutz. © The Easton Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society, New York)
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The text throughout the exhibition offers details on the different phases that are at the heart of Freud’s belief system (note: if it’s been a while since you’ve read Freud, that’s pretty crazy!) With the conclusion that an artist cannot, or perhaps should, never conquer the Oedipal complex.
So what does this mean in terms of art? It means exploring nightmarish topics like beheadings and castration, and images that evoke menstrual blood and umbilical cords. Not with disgust, but rather with a curious eye – at least, for my part.
The artist Louise Bourgeois. (Screen capture: YouTube)
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I was really impressed with a little piece from 1999 called
“Torment”, in which a black figurine is suspended from a string, under a strange gallows evoking a playground, facing a concrete slab. Underneath, is engraved the sentence: “To undo a torment, it is necessary to start somewhere”. If I could explain to you why it gave me shivers, that wouldn’t be art.
Nearby are some writings of Bourgeois on childbirth and the cutting of the umbilical cord. “I am the waste / I am the
cut, ”she wrote, most likely moments after waking from a disturbing dream. Elsewhere is one of those shabby, worn, frayed “husband pillows” with a sewn-in vaginal hole in the center, a light fabric applied to the top reminiscent of a worn placenta. It makes you uncomfortable, but it goes beyond: shock.
Before Bourgeois entered Freudian psychoanalysis, while she was taking care of her dying mother, she overheard an affair between her father and her tutor, who was only a few years older than her (Bourgeois n ‘ was no more than 20 or 21 at the time). This act of psychological violence reverberated throughout his long life. The least we can do is peruse the galleries to find out how she handled it, even if it unequivocally slips into unpleasant territory.
As Philip Larratt-Smith reminded me as I headed for the elevators, we are all coming out of a pandemic year and an introspective period. Bourgeois’ retreat into his own psyche can resonate with all of us now more than ever.
“The destruction of the father” by Louise Bourgeois, at the Jewish Museum in New York. (Credit: Glenstone Museum Collection, Potomac, MD. © The Easton Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society, New York / Photo: Ron Amstutz)
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