The Institute for Contemporary Art may have already had its grand opening at its new home on the waterfront, but its current show, "Bourgeois in Boston," cements the new space as an institution that is both locally concerned and capable of hosting exhibits of the utmost significance and elegance.
Louise Bourgeois, the sole artist in this mini-retrospective of her work, is perhaps the world's most influential female sculptor and certainly one of the most influential living artists. At 95, she has experienced the advent of art movements from Cubism to Surrealism, and one can see the influence of each of these in her work, as well as the weight of her age and memory.
Bourgeois, born in 1911, has rallied critics around a devoutly individual kind of art, from whimsical abstract drawings to sculptures that recall the essence of humanity through organic forms. Though works on paper and a single painting are exhibited in the show, "Bourgeois in Boston"'s heart lies in the artist's brilliant and emotionally moving sculptures. Louise Bourgeois' art is intimately connected to her own life. Because of this human touch and autobiographical quality, the tangible and physical presence of the sculptures make them much more sympathetic to the viewer than the drawings and prints.
There is no literal self-portrait in this exhibition, but the artist's sculptures, made up of biomorphic bulges and suggestions of body parts, each seem to contain an element of Bourgeois herself. These is no better illustration of this than "Spiral Woman" (2003), a bronze cast depicting what seems to be a figure caught up in a dramatic spiral, a whirl of metal. Two arms and two legs, knees bent as if in flight, emerge from the bottom of the spiral.
One of the most interesting aspects of this sculpture is that it hangs from a cord, allowing it to dangle and twist. This has two effects: the sculpture is given even more vitality, a restless energy that belies its heaviness, and a quality of personal narrative, as if we are this figure caught up in the whirl, playing out a minor drama of our past in front of our own eyes. The sculpture hangs at eye-level, allowing the viewer an intimate relationship to the piece as it struggles to escape its bounds.
Bourgeois is quoted in one nameplate saying that her sculptures "need to have a real involvement with my body." Each of her pieces invoke this by using surreal yet organic forms that force the viewer to think of their own body in terms of the sculpture. "Janus Fleuri" (1968), another hanging piece, forces the viewer to confront what looks like a violent yet sanctified mixture of pelvis bones, and a mass of tissue and kidneys coming together in folds of flesh.
Its name comes from the Roman Janus, two-faced God of entrances, of beginnings and endings. The tangle of bodily references brings to mind Freud's subconscious sexuality that was an inescapable part of the Surrealism Bourgeois partakes in. Louise Bourgeois' work is created by her experiences, and it is said that the affair her father had with her childhood governess informs some of the blatant, inherent and accepted sexuality in her work.
Bourgeois is known for one symbol in particular: the spider. Far from the fearful interpretation most have, the artist compares it to her mother: helpful, clever and wise. An entire room of this exhibition is dominated by one such spider.
Over 10 feet tall, "Spider" (1996) sits in its chamber like a guardian. Cast in bronze, the spider's legs are knotted studies of muscles and tendons, thick cords of metal that seem to be pulled taught between its joints. Viewers are free to walk amongst the legs, and thus immerse themselves in the piece. Standing underneath the spider's body, surrounded by legs that seem to dance gracefully on point, one really does feel protected rather than frightened.
"Bourgeois in Boston" is made up entirely of pieces from Boston-area collectors, imbuing the small-yet-impressive show with a sense of locality and pride that the ICA obviously shares with its surroundings. The show is an unfailingly elegant presentation of Bourgeois' work through an intimate arrangement of small rooms for viewers to proceed through, interacting with each sculpture on an individual basis.
One small installation is presented here, "Cell (Hand and Mirrors)" (1995). It is a realistic sculpture of two forearms clutching each other on a pedestal of rough marble surrounded by a cage of metal doors and mirrors. In the end, Bourgeois' work is an impenetrable puzzle of self references and personal experiences reflected endlessly, a lens by which we are inspired to write our own autobiographies documenting our own struggles.
