Elanso

"Where My Motivation Comes FromIt is not so muchwhere my motivation comes frombut ratherhow it managesto survive."- Louise BourgeoisLouise Bourgeois is one rad old lady!!!Typically, gigantic spider imagery is not my thing, but Louise's spider as mother possesses the most extraordinary, primal beauty, & the delicate pointy legs create a nurturing, mysterious embrace that is universally maternal . . .*Yet, I have left the Guggenheim retrospective feeling quite unsettled and deeply sad.  I felt the same way after seeing the documentary, Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress and the Tangerine.  There is something about Louise Bourgeois's imagery that is so identifiable in an immediate primal experiential sense, it makes me feel as if I do elaborate twists, turns, and leaps to relate to other artists.  Maybe it's because she aligns herself with nature such as, the hanging nests and cocoons, the merging of male and female anatomy, the gently interlocked palms, the union of animal & human imagery, the "cumuls" sculptures fashioned after fluffy cumulus clouds, and the spiders of the most mesmerizing beauty . . . Louise Bourgeois's art just makes sense to me!*I recall that in the documentary, Louise mentions that the privilege of the artist is to learn one's own unconscious.  (I remember thinking that I didn't want to know!)  Perhaps the journey of an artist leads one unknowingly down these paths through dark forests, which one, in a way, is forced to explore similar to a hero in mythology.  And I think that her art exposes deeply buried traumas concerning loss, separation, and rejection.  For the child and the parent or the woman and the man, these intimacies are fraught with vulnerability and peril, epitomized by the runaway girl . . . *Louise has said that her enormous sculptures are driven by the intensity of her emotions: "My emotions are inappropriate to my size.  My emotions are my demons . . . The intensity of my emotions is much too much for me to handle . . . " (You and me both, girlfriend! :)*Louise Bourgeois, The Guggenheim, June 27 - September 28, 2008 (One more week!)