18

LOUISE BOURGEOIS (b. 1911) IN AND OUT initialed "LB" on the underside of bed structure; initialed...

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA
LOUISE BOURGEOIS (b. 1911) IN AND OUT initialed  LB  on the underside of bed structure; initialed...
LOUISE BOURGEOIS
(b. 1911)
IN AND OUT
initialed "LB" on the underside
of bed structure; initialed "LB"
on interior of leg support
steel and lead
15 x 24 x 321/8 in.
(38.1 x 61 x 81.6 cm)
executed in 1997
ESTIMATE: $200,000-300,000

PROVENANCE
Cheim & Read, NEW YORK
Louise Bourgeois' body of work "...is a 'primal' art in the sense that inspiration springs directly from emotions triggered by her past. It is fetishistic rather than literary or cerebral, functioning as an exorcism with curative and magical effects. This might explain its freshness, seductiveness and resistance to traditional classification. It is an art that is closer to life than to art. Bourgeois' esthetic credo might be stated as follows: "Art is guaranty of sanity." Its power to exorcise lends it therapeutic value. "Art," says Bourgeois, "is the experiencing - or rather the re-experiencing - of a trauma." She became a sculptor to get rid of her past, re-creating it in order to survive. "As a child, she felt manipulated, so as an adult she wanted to manipulate. Sculpture was her weapon of revenge." This explains the essentially biographical and psychological interpretation of her work, why memory and the past serve as wellsprings for her creativity, why her sculpture is so profoundly erotic. Indeed her entire oeuvre is elaborated around childhood references. "Confessions, self-portraits, memories, fantasies of a troubled being who seeks from sculpture the peace and order lacking in her childhood - such is the work of Louise Bourgeois"
(M.L. Bernadac, LOUISE BOURGEOIS, PARIS, 1996, p. 8)