PRESENTATION: Louise Bourgeois-Imaginary Conversations

Through the use of abstract form and a wide variety of media, Louise Bourgeois dealt with notions of universal balance, playfully juxtaposing materials conventionally considered male or female. She would, for example, use rough or hard materials most strongly associated with masculinity to sculpt soft biomorphic forms suggestive of femininity.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: National Museum of Norway Archive

Louise Bourgeois is one of the great names of 20th century art. Refusing to be confined by a single artistic movement, Bourgeois explored a variety of styles and techniques – a variety that few other artists can match. The exhibition “Louise Bourgeois. Imaginary Conversations” marks a turning point when it comes to Bourgeois’s significance today. This major exhibition sets her impressively long career against a wide range of interlocutors, both past and present, whose work she engaged with as well as many others who engaged with hers. The exhibition takes the classic museum retrospective, with its traditional focus on a single individual, and expands it to incorporate the work of other artists. Here, Bourgeois’s highly personal and emotional works are put in dialogue with around 50 artists like Edvard Munch, Marie Laurencin, Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, Arshile Gorky, Louise Nevelson, Senga Nengudi, Alina Szapocznikow, Seni Awa Camara, Nan Goldin, Robert Gober, and Rosemarie Trockel. Some of the encounters between Bourgeois and these artists actually took place, while other conversations between works have been set up for the exhibition. Bourgeois is commonly regarded as an outsider in the world of art. Interpretations often treat her as an individual largely isolated from art history and other narratives. Imaginary Conversations is the first large-scale exhibition that seeks to upend the conventional image of Bourgeois and see her as artist in dialogue with the times she lived through. The exhibition showcases an artist who, throughout her entire career, was preoccupied with the artistic and social changes taking place in contemporary life, such as representations of the body in the 1960s, feminism in the 1970s, and the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s. The exhibition will show that Bourgeois’s interest in themes like loneliness, love, illness, sexuality, and gender roles was shared and informed by many others. This is the first exhibition to articulate and define Bourgeois’s bond to art history, presenting her as a central pivot linking modern, postmodern, and contemporary art. The exhibition features works from Bourgeois’s entire career, from her paintings and prints from the 1940s to the more well-known “cells” she created in her final decades. Throughout the exhibition period, Bourgeois’s giant spider sculpture “Maman” (1999) will be on display in the Palace Park by the Royal Palace, a short walk from the National Museum. You can also see other sculptures by Bourgeois at Tjuvholmen and in the Ekebergparken sculpture park in Oslo. In the late 1980s, Bourgeois began holding her weekly Sunday Salons, where she met young artists for conversations at her home. For the exhibition, the National Museum has installed its own, custom-made version of Bourgeois’s salon, where visitors can experience unique and rare video recordings from Bourgeois’s own gatherings. In 2010, Bourgeois created the memorial “The Damned, the Possessed, and the Beloved” together with the Swiss architect Peter Zumthor. Located in Vardø in the High Arctic county of Finnmark, the memorial commemorates the victims of the seventeenth-century witch trials there. Finnmark is the county in Norway that passed down the most death sentences for alleged witches. The memorial is located on Steilneset in Vardø, where ninety-one people were burned at the stake.

Works by: Louise Bourgeois, Diane Arbus, ACT UP, Anu Põder, Hans Arp, Francis Bacon, Alvin Baltrop, Phyllida Barlow, Lynda Benglis, Joseph Beuys, Pierre Bonnard, André Breton, Seni Awa Camara, Rebecca Campeau, Helen Chadwick, Constantin Brâncuși, Marcel Duchamp, Mary Beth Edelson, Louis Michel Eilshemius, Alberto Giacometti, Robert Gober, Nan Goldin, Arshile Gorky, Eva Hesse, Roni Horn, Ewa Jaroszyńska, Yayoi Kusama, Wifredo Lam, Marie Laurencin, Leonilson, Anna Maria Maiolino, Man Ray, Sonja Ferlov Mancoba, Robert Mapplethorpe, Ana Mendieta, Marisa Merz, Edvard Munch, Dora Maar, Senga Nengudi, Louise Nevelson, Pablo Picasso, Anu Põder, Carol Rama, Auguste Rodin, Nancy Spero, Alina Szapocznikow, Dorothea Tanning, Rosemarie Trockel and David Wojnarowicz.

Photo: Louise Bourgeois, THE DESTRUCTION OF THE FATHER, 1974-2017, Archival polyurethane resin, wood, fabric and red light, 93 5/8 x 142 5/8 x 97 7/8″; 237.8 x 362.3 x 248.6 cm, Collection Glenstone Foundation, © The Easton Foundation/Licensed by BONO, NO and VAGA at ARS, NY, Photo: Ron Amstutz

Info: Curators: Andrea Kroksnes and Briony Fer, The National Museum of Norway, Pb. 7014 St. Olavs plass, Oslo, Norway, Duration: 6/5-6/8/2023, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 10:00-15:00, www.nasjonalmuseet.no/