Yesterday the French / American artist Louise Bourgeois (December 25, 1911 –May 31, 2010) passed away. I saw a retrospective of her work on 2008, at the Guggenheim Museum (the one in New York). Not being precisely a fan of those “modern” sculptures that seem to pollute every modern art museum around the world (and by the way, why are they always huge?) I was very impressed nonetheless by some of her sculptures. The underlying sexual tension, oppression and feeling of abandonment in her art is extremely powerful and disturbing. On the other hand the variety of materials and techniques she works with is remarkable: wood, resin, bronze, etc. Since the Guggenheim has that annoying “no photographs allowed” policy I don’t have any pictures of that exhibit, so I’ll just post this video I found on Youtube, featuring the wonderful Gymnopédie No.1 by Eric Satie
The spectator is no longer merely a viewer if he is able to move from the stage of viewing to the stage of collaborating. . . . Dislocation is analogous to the state of passivity that is rejected and becomes a state of active being. In other words it is the dislocation, the transformation of a person who is passive, depressed through a crise de conscience, into a person who becomes suddenly active-the passage from death to life through the creative act.
From “An Interview with Louise Bourgeois”, by Susi Bloch. Art Journal, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Summer, 1976), pp. 370-373