Biographical

Every Sunday, the past three decades, a small group met in New York in a house in Chelsea, the neighborhood became one of the major art galleries. The house of Louise Bourgeois is one of those typical constructions of the late nineteenth century.

Members of this group come here to pay tribute to a legend of the art of the twentieth century, that famous until June 2, a retrospective at the Pompidou Centre. Born in 1911 in Paris, located in Manhattan since 1938, it has gone through many artistic movements, such as surrealism, abstract expressionism, minimalism, but has developed a language personnel who joined the practices most contemporary and has a real fascination many young artists.

Biographical

December 25, 1911: Birth of Louise Bourgeois in Paris. Her parents are restoring old tapestries. Child them ready by hand, drawing tapestries, before moving in 1932 to study mathematics at the Sorbonne, she abandons for the School of Fine Arts.

1937: Meeting of the American art historian Robert Goldwater, whom she married and accompanies New York. There she began attending the mid-surrealist refugees to flee Nazism.

Years 1950: While New York succumbs to the popularity of Abstract Expressionism, Louise Bourgeois started construction of a series of totems, whose forms will evolve gradually. The main themes of his work - femininity, and even feminism, sexuality, sometimes cloudy or cruel childhood injuries - are beginning to expand.

1999: Receives Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale for the whole of his work.

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Is this his French origin and upbringing that gave him the idea to renew the tradition of Parisian salons, where, from the sixteenth century, women from a culturally and often receive aristocratic intellectuals, politicians, writers and poets?

Louise Bourgeois exhibition wishes and it is sufficient, if you are artist (in the case, the cause is almost lost ...), to contact his assistant, Jerry Gorovoy who, after a few questions, gives address emphasizing punctuality - 15 hours, exactly "- and the need to make some selected works.

Louise Bourgeois receives on the day it does not work, in order to give as many artists an opportunity to show their works, to exchange views, and to inform them of its decision. The comments have been very hard. Louise Bourgeois does not have the reputation of being easy. "Sunday, bloody sunday!" (Foutu Sunday), did it écriée some time ago, sometimes bringing tears to the eyes of visitors ....

Painters, sculptors, poets, writers, dancers from all over the world, some known as Guillermo Kuitca or Richard Long, but most strangers, in order to collect his opinion, his advice.

I sounds to a door glass and metal and am introduced in the living room by Pouran Esafily, films and records each quarter since 1994 and reminds me that I have special permission to take two photographs. She announced to the dozen people already seated, the only non-artist now, I am the "guest of honor" and, as such, my chair will be placed next to that of Louise Bourgeois and that I will be directing the meeting. ...

We are asked, without explanation, to welcome Louise Bourgeois' Holy mackerel! ", A little old-fashioned expression, which simply means" Oh my God ". The prosecution is worn. The shelves filled with records and books fill a wall of the room. A window overlooks a tree but remain closed, we are doing suffocating heat. Faced with shelves are pinned old posters, invitations old, yellowed newspaper articles, an ex-voto a leg in tinplate, the certificate naming Louise Bourgeois Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres, a photograph of a tapestry of the seventeenth century Another of his childhood home ... No work of the artist is visible.

Suddenly heads turn to a door opening onto a small kitchen from which the sound of cane. Louise Bourgeois arrives with her walker, a small woman with dark hair learned, smile, wave white sweater skirt and black sticky.

As a goddess, offerings are made: home cakes, boxes of chocolate (it is very greedy), superb embroidery from an ancient heritage. Thanks brief. We are asked to serve drinks placed on a low table - whisky, gin, soda. It identifies an artist and he suddenly announces "You, you were already here a week ago, so you spend last." She spoke in English, except for me.

Each person should look like, what it does say, clarify its interests. The first artist, Udo Klapf, comes from Vienna. He showed his drawings of realistic bill. Then it was the turn of April Bending, a painter living in the Caribbean. There followed a discussion of the hurricanes that are rampant. Each time, the works are circulating around the room, each person is invited to give its opinion.

Jennifer Gren shows very long rolls of prints made on the digital image, and then writing and artwork on the books: The Capitaine Fracasse, a poem by Rilke (Louise Bourgeois asked the Viennese be read in German), a Rimbaud (which I am instructed to recite in french). Verdict: "Very interesting." An expert on the architecture of New York has brought in a shoe box with some sculptures made of rocks, wires. Louise Bourgeois, very interested, asks: "But how do you therefore to tie all these things together?" It suggests a designer, after extensive discussion on his work in pencil on paper: "Why not make prints?"

Lin Emery shows photographs of his great sculptures of steel or aluminium. They are inspired by nature, some of which appear in museums in New Orleans, in Singapore. As for Olga Alexander, it uses Barbie dolls in his sculptures, drawings, prints. She explains want to drag them to the ground with rage, using them as paintbrushes for her paintings.