Here’s a great post at the LA Times on the current Louise Bourgeois retrospective at the LA Museum of Contemporary Art. Quoting Christopher Knight:
…the phrase “Art is a guaranty of sanity” is written with great deliberation in pencil on a simple sheet of pink paper, its status as a coded drawing inviolable. The work is dated 2000 and so can safely be said to represent a lifetime of thoughtful practice. Its aphoristic suggestion of an undertaking to answer for the payment of a debt — a guaranty — resonates throughout the exhibition.
The sentiment is the antithesis of victimization, in which Bourgeois acknowledges the hideousness of common abuse and, rather than stoically rise above it, as if some plaster saint, instead endeavors to live through it to become a survivor.
Reading this review took me back to some of Bourgeois’ intense prints I saw at the Kaliman Gallery in Sydney last year, two of which I’ve posted here.
Louise Bourgeois
Hair, 2000
drypoint
20.3 x 14.6 cm
Louise Bourgeois
Fear, 1999
drypoint, 20 x 27.5 cm
