LIMITS OF THE CANVAS

"Every day you have to abandon the past or accept it. If you cannot accept it, you become a sculptor."  Louise Bourgeois

I came across some interesting ideas in a book by Ann Coxon (2010) titled Louise Bourgeois. This book details her creative process and discusses the psychological features of her sculpture. Coxon states that Louise is most notably recognised as a sculptor. However she began her creative life with paintings and works on paper.  This book traces the metamorphosis.

In the mid 1940's Louise Bourgeois was exhibiting alongside American artists such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko.  At this time New York and Parisian artisan circles were awash with the dominant philosophical view of existentialism.  This world view placed great emphasis on authenticity of expression particularly through art.  (Coxon, 2010, p. 16)  Around this time according to Coxon (2010) she began to express her frustration with 'the limits of pictorial representation.'  Basically two dimensional surfaces were limiting her ability to express herself.  Around this time Jackson Pollock began to explore with canvases laid on the floor and paint dripped, poured (Coxon, 2010) and splattered beyond the boundaries of the painting.

Pollock pushing the boundaries on canvas

At this point in time Louise had three young boys.  Her art displayed some of her struggles  to find emotional space or time to do her art work.  She literally had her head in domestic issues with her family responsibilities.





A time of domestic challenges to the artist



Louise entered the world of sculpture with objects she called personages.  These were upright, rigid almost totem like figures that were intended to represent the people in her life.  As a newly arrived immigrant she created these figures to keep her family from France close to her. When the personages were first exhibited they did not have bases and were dotted around the gallery.  It was if the room was full of people as they encountered the personages. (Coxon, 2010).

 





Personages creating a room full of people






 

The personages were created through carving, cutting and hacking.  This method allowed her to express her aggression and anger.  One in particular had nails nailed into the object almost fashioned like a voodoo doll.  Louise said, 'This piece kept me from doing to her what I did to the sculpture...I controlled my feelings through sculpture.'

 

Eventually she grouped her personages.  The most basic definition of assemblage is to use found or ready made objects and group them together to make a sculptural composition. Coxon (2010) described this as equivalent of collage - in three dimensional form. In a 1986 interview with Bourgeois she stated, 'Assemblage is different to carving.  It is not an attack on things. It is a coming to terms with things....It really is a work of love....there is the restoration and reparation....You repair the thing until you remake it completely.'(Storr, 1986 cited in Coxon, 2010, p.30).

 

Later in her life, Louise Bourgeois created a series of installations that she titled 'cells.'  Installations were devised by artists to overcome the limitations of sculpture and to refrain from the control of the spectators point of view (Crone and Schaesberg, 2008).  According to Crone (Crone and Schaesberg, 2008) the cells illustrate how her past both contains and imprisons her. 

 

Bourgeois described the psychological effects produced by the different processes of creating three dimensional objects Carving has the ability to release anger and destructive urges in a cathartic and immediate way.  Whereas assemblage allows the artist to salvage, slowly repair and reconstruct the past into something new.  It is a transformation.

(Coxon, 2010).