Louise Bourgeois
Louise Bourgeois, 1982
Robert Mapplethorpe
She began with feet for that was what she could reach... stitching the tapestries back to life... following in her mother’s footsteps. Her mother— a weaver (strong, resilient, loyal as a spider); her father preferably absent—abusive when home.
To the Sorbonne she went to study mathematics, drawn and settled by the rules and constancy of equations. Then, upon her mother’s death, she returned to art to “unravel a torment” and ‘recognize herself.’
Her relationship with her family expressed again and again throughout her art- throughout her life... pain, trauma, grief and resilience. Constantly she created, though she remained somewhat peripheral until her later years.
A role model to feminists who exhibited with abstract expressionists, showed leanings toward surrealism and considered her work pre-gendered, Louise Bourgeois was not one to be easily defined. As she was not particularly easy to work with or study under, not all who knew her remember her fondly.
Fée Couturière, 1963 (Cast 1984)
Louise Bourgeois
Yet, her art is just so powerful… selfish and brave… hard and demanding… rather like herself, I would imagine.
When I confided to a friend one evening that I was struggling to write this article, partially because I wasn’t sure I actually liked her, Louise Bourgeois corrected me the very next morning through her documentary. “You see this desire to be likable is really a pain in the neck—how are you to be likable and be yourself?”, she declared, inadvertently challenging me.
Her words were a reminder of a quote which made its way through Instagram awhile back: “Do your daughters a favor and teach them to be okay with people not liking them.” Being that it was reposted again and again, perhaps I wasn’t the only woman who was still trying to learn that as an adult.
Recently, I had the opportunity to experience firsthand how far I still have to come in making peace with not always being liked and of choosing to be myself over placating others. And, goodness was it terrifying. While my adult mind told me it was okay and that all would be well, my body would not listen. Instead, my stomach dropped, I struggled to catch my breath, and I was filled with shame for having “caused” feelings of dislike from another person.
Yes, my desire to be liked is ‘really a pain in the neck’ and somewhat debilitating at times. Maybe that is why I struggled with Louise Bourgeois… She had seemingly transcended something that I am still rather stuck in. Perhaps I am jealous of the ability she had to choose herself and her truth over being liked?
Louise Bourgeois seemed to grasp that it was not her job to make people like her (though I wonder if she sometimes longed for that all the same). Instead, she focused on telling her story and processing her past through her art. Though she did not always make you feel good, she undoubtably made you think.
I respect her for that—and maybe that’s even better than liking her.