In February 1980, an article appeared in Art News titled “The Discreet Grace of Louise Bourgeois” reporting that the artist, long considered somewhat “special”, was now part of the American art mainstream. In the same year, American Vogue published her portrait on its pages, and two years later, in November 1982, MoMA organized the first retrospective exhibition of a woman creator in her honor.

In the catalog of this retrospective, the eminent curator and art critic William Rubin, then director of the museum’s painting and sculpture department, presented Bourgeois as a lone wolf of a different size, capable of challenging the legend of Pollock and de Kooning. This means that he had great power, both artistic and personal, he concluded. “By the strength of her personality, she avoids the rhetoric of the time,” he concluded his preface.

Deborah Wye, who curated the exhibition and spent five years researching the Bourgeois case, went on to say that the French-American visual artist was an outsider, always moving on the sidelines. In her luggage were many works that were offbeat but eccentric, defying currents, idiosyncratic, for which she drew inspiration mainly from the traumas of her childhood.

What does Bourgeois think of them? Did she know the abstract expressionists she was compared to? He exhibited several times with them in galleries in New York. So why did he remain in the shadows while the rest were anointed by the media as prophets preparing us for the new world? She once called herself a “marathon runner”, claiming that she was always present at the race. He hinted that he also ran a distance that others had run. And it’s true, it’s just that the art world has missed most of the trail.

In his notebook, Bourgeois writes: “Precious liquids: sweat, tears, snot, phlegm, saliva, motor oil, bile, wine, milk, pus, semen, blood.”

Bourgeois was 70 years old when all her works were presented at the Museum of Modern Art. She had, of course, lived in America since 1938. Perhaps it was convenient to present her as a lonely creator. What other explanation could justify such an omission? Why has the art world ignored her for so many years? Andreas Kroksnes, curator of the exhibition “Louise Bourgeois. Imaginary Conversations, which is currently on display at the Nasjonal Museet in Oslo. “She was out of touch with the times, she could not be associated with any artistic movement, she was a woman and, most importantly, she seemed to focus on matters of her personal life. We didn’t see her because she couldn’t be seen, they said. However, this was the story not only of Bourgeois, but also of many of her contemporaries, whom art historians and museums bypassed,” explains Ms. Kroksnes.

contrasts

The exhibition, housed on the top floor of the impressive museum, introduces the work of Bourgeois to iconic figures of the historical avant-garde (Picasso, Giacometti, Gorky, Maar), as well as younger artists such as Francis Bacon, Linda Benglis, Nan Goldin and Rosemary Trokel, trying to show by this juxtaposition, that she was always attuned to the trends and issues of her time.

Perhaps sometimes she was one step ahead, but she always tried to maintain a dialogue with her time, she was always in the know.

The feminist who didn’t want to talk about it publicly

People who first met Bourgeois at the Museum of Modern Art saw all of her work as memes—her 1940s and 1950s “Characters” paintings, her resin work, her feminist sculptural installations—but weren’t able to identify them. with the historical and social context that gave birth to them. “If you do not look at the captions for each work, there is a feeling that the artist is trying to tell all the stories. She did not have a certain style that served her constantly, and this also contributed to her belated recognition. But it’s interesting to see when he adopts each artistic practice. She starts with painting, moves on to sculpture, takes the position of feminism, is fond of activism, takes up yarn. Her every step speaks of the dictates of her time,” explains the K curator.

While the MoMA exhibition was “working”, she also showed some snubs regarding the illicit relationship between her father and the teacher they hired to teach her English, Sandy. This is the time when experiential art begins to gain momentum. Bourgeois uses the term “child abuse” for the first time. “It was a very strong description for a situation that was quite common at the time. It was a traumatic experience for sure, but if you ask me, I think the much deeper scars came from years of caring for her sick mother and watching her die,” says Mrs Croxnes. Author Sherri Hubstead, Paul Auster’s wife, also noted in her article that Bourgeois’s public acknowledgment was as personal as it was clever, while Jerry Gorovoy, her artist assistant for over 30 years, insisted that the move promoted attentive reading her work. “He recognized the appeal of the story and used it. She began to talk about her relationship with her mother, she interpreted all her works in the light of her biography. However, she did not hesitate to rename the works and present them from different angles, each time showing what she was interested in,” the curator notes. A characteristic example of this practice was the work “The Blind Leading the Blind” (1947-1949), which is included in the exhibition. The sculpture refers to a table that she stated was inspired by a table in her father’s house. Very often, as a child, she would hide downstairs to eavesdrop on her parents. However, there are also interpretations linking the sculpture to the work of her close friend Le Corbusier, who was then working on the plans for the United Nations building in New York. In 1979, she submitted the same work, painting it pink and calling it “COYOTE”, an acronym for the phrase “Take off your tired old ethic”, in which she expressed her support for sex workers’ demand for the decriminalization of prostitution. The same was true of her famous latex work, The Destruction of the Father, which is also on display in Oslo. Its first title was “Dinner”, but it appears to have been changed to keep up with the overthrow of patriarchy that the feminist movement fought for. She never accepted the term “feminist”. However, her work was overtly political. “She didn’t want to be put in boxes. She was afraid that her work would be perceived as aimed at a small audience. He wanted to leave it open,” notes Kroksnes.

socially anxious

Regardless of what she wanted, audiences and critics reveled in her personal dramas. They used the tools that she first gave them, forgetting about other possible interpretations of her work, which concerned not only issues of art, but also the reality of her time. “Precious Liquids” was first shown on “Document” in 1992. The installation consisted of a metal bed frame, a man’s coat hanging, and inside it, on the same hanger, a white dress. Above the coat were also two rubber balls that represented male genitalia and small glass jars. They all went back to the story of their father and teacher, and the bed only hinted at what had happened between them. Croxnes disagrees. “The installation is not only about sex, but also about illness and death. The claustrophobic atmosphere of Precious Liquids is reminiscent of intensive care in a hospital. It could refer to her ailing mother (whom she actually sucked – the glass vessels resemble those glasses), to the death of her son Michel, and also to the AIDS scourge that has already shaken the art world.” Bourgeois writes in his notebook: Precious liquids: sweat, tears, snot, phlegm, saliva, car oil, bile, wine, milk, pus, semen, blood. “It’s so limiting to read her work from one point of view, to depict her as a fragile, mentally unstable artist when she herself seemed so smart, socially sensitive, ambitious, real. She took the stories of her life and turned them into something new, universal.”

Until 06.08, http://www.nasjonalmuseet.no/.