Louise Bourgeois working on Sleep II in Italy, 1967. Photo: Studio Fotografico, Carrara. © The Easton Foundation.

In 2004, two boxes of what have been labelled Bourgeois’ ‘psychoanalytical writings’ were discovered by her assistant in her Chelsea home, and a further two in 2010. These thousands of loose-leaf sheets of paper recorded Bourgeois’ inner conflicts, dream recordings and self-probing analysis, commencing during the period when the artist began undergoing intense psychoanalysis at the hands of Dr. Henry Lowenfeld, a follower of Sigmund Freud.

Louise Bourgeois, loose sheet, 13 September 1957, 26.7 x 20.3 cm. LB-0219, Louise Bourgeois Archive, New York. © The Easton Foundation.

With these in hand, curator Phillip Laratt-Smith published a volume of Bourgeois’ writings, and conceived the exhibition, Louise Bourgeois: The Return of the Repressed. Currently tucked away in residential North London, the works could not have found a more suitable site than The Freud Museum – a home firmly entrenched in psychoanalytic history, where both its patriarchal namesake, and his daughter Anna, remained until their deaths.

With Bourgeois’ writings, drawings and sculptures housed throughout Freud’s former possessions and collections, a challenging and quite perilous dialogue is created, laying the groundwork for a very dangerous obsession that may inextricably fuse Bourgeois to Freud.

Louise Bourgeois's bronze Janus Fleuri, 1968, suspended over Freud's couch at The Freud Museum, London. Courtesy The Easton Foundation. Photo: Ollie Harrop. © Louise Bourgeois Trust.

Hanging above Freud’s psychoanalytic couch, the original brought with him from Vienna, is a work by Bourgeois often referred to as a self portrait of the artist. The bronze sculpture Janus Fleuri is a ambiguous form with connotations of sexuality, metamorphosis, and struggle. Swaying above the place where free association was born, Janus Fleuri looks both to the past and to the future, and as Laratt-Smith has argued, embodies the artist’s Oedipal deadlock -  an unresolvable struggle between Bourgeois, her father and her mother, stalemated by her mother’s death.

Louise Bourgeois, Cell XXIV (Portrait), 2001, steel, stainless steel, glass, wood and fabric, 177.8 x 106.7 x 106.7 cm. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth and Cheim & Read. Photo: Christopher Burke. © Louise Bourgeois Trust.

Bourgeois’ work functions as an expression of her psychic unconscious – a way of giving form to anxieties she could not articulate, which she then subsequently analysed in her writings. While Freud focused on ‘the word’ – translating thoughts and dreams into articulations – Bourgeois moved freely between the two. Her writings reveal struggles, at times debilitating, to define herself within the roles of mother, daughter, wife and artist. And works like Cell XXIV (Portrait), embody this struggle. With three heads and three mirrors, Cell XXIV presents a multiplious identity further broken down by its external reflections – the kind of fragmented view of the self that Bourgeois struggled with throughout her life.

But it is this struggle, and her torment, that fueled her work. This Bourgeois understood well. Speaking specifically about Freud, Bourgeois wrote:

‘The truth is that Freud did nothing for artists, or for the artist’s problem, the artist’s torment - to be an artist involves some suffering. That’s why artists repeat themselves – because they have no access to a cure … the need of artists remains unsatisfied, as does their torment.’

While Bourgeois embraced Freudian psychoanalysis, she was aware of its limitations for herself as an artist. Her writings were not an attempt to cure herself or ease her suffering, but were rather used as fuel for the fire. And it is here, with Freud and Bourgeois under the same roof, that we find ourselves immersed in the realm of a very dangerous obsession.

Machine Torture, 1975. After the narration of 'In the Penal Colony' (1914) by Franz Kafka, realized for the exhibition 'Machines Celibataires' (1975-1977). Photo: Gert Jan van Rooij.

‘Oh’, she said. I looked down and saw the lady. She looked confused. ‘I thought those legs were part of the artwork, but they’re yours’. The legs in question were mine. They were stood on a ladder while the upper half of my body had disappeared into the attic. It had been watching a fairly horrendous film in which two men were making something unidentifiable out of what looked most like milk and porridge oats, all whilst producing numerous unnecessary movements and noises. It wasn’t my favourite artwork in the show, and before more visitors would start to confuse my legs for an artwork, I decided to climb down.

The show, titled He disappeared into complete silence, is constructed around a single work by one of the most prolific artists of the 20^th century, Louise Bourgeois. The centrepiece is a small portfolio, consisting of nine plates, each with an engraving and an accompanying parable. Every plate tells a story about an emotion or experience – the work covers loneliness, abandonment, distress, loss and even murder. Not the most frivolous of subjects, but then again, it is Louise Bourgeois, she who spent most of her career exploring the affair her father had with her nanny and the long-lasting effect this had on her psyche. Not someone to cling on to the more positive and superficial things in life, and rightly so. The important processes take place below the surface.

He disappeared into complete silence, Louise Bourgeois, 1947. Portfolio consisting of nine etchings and nine parables. Courtesy Peter Blum Gallery, New York. Photo: Gert Jan van Rooij,

Curators Laurie Cluitmans and Arnisa Zeqo had both, independently of each other, seen ‘He disappeared into complete silence’ and somehow it had kept hunting them, asking them to be displayed somewhere else, in a different context, with a different emphasis. Miraculously the two shared this same passion and as they started talking the concept for the show came to existence. They created a new context for the work by drawing parallels between Bourgeois’ plates and works by other contemporary artists.

In the first parable, for example, Bourgeois describes a beautiful young girl in the city, waiting for a date who doesn’t show. Her loneliness is abstracted in a drawing of a desolate tower. It also returns in Francesco Vezzoli’s short film The End of the Human Voice (2001), shown on the first floor. Bianca Jagger plays a wealthy lady in negligee, neglected by her lover. The film is set in the lady’s mansion where she anxiously awaits his phone calls, desperate to hear his voice again. When she realises their conversations bring her nothing but misery, her desperation turns into anger. Towards the end she begs him to leave her alone. In contrast to Bourgeois’ minimal execution of the experience, Vezzoli’s work drags us through every emotional state of the female soul. It’s dirty, raw and emotional where Bourgeois’ work is distanced, almost cold. But seeing Vezzoli makes you understand Bourgeois, and vice versa.

Plate 7 He disappeared into complete silence Louise Bourgeois 1947 Portfolio consisting nine etchings and nine parables. Courtesy Peter Blum Gallery, New York. Photo: the author

Another brilliant, and incredibly sinister parallel is the one between plate number seven and the torture machine. In the parable, Bourgeois tells the story of a man who is very angry with his wife. So angry he decides to cut her in small pieces, make a stew of her and eat her with his friends. And then there is Machine Turture (1975), a work installed on the second floor, made to the instructions of Swiss curator Harald Szeemann and based on the short story ‘In the Penal Colony’ by Franz Kafka. It is an absurd piece of engineering in which individuals can be tortured for hours using thick needles. In Kafka’s text, as well as in Bourgeois’ work, the victim and the cause of murder are completely insignificant but the murder itself is described as a performance, almost a ritual. These works are not about righteousness or morality, they are merely bringing to light the cruelty and complete absurdity of the human mind. And yes, Freud would have had a field day.

Spread out over three floors of this beautiful old building in Haarlem, part of which, ironically, used to be a meat hall where butchers sold their goods, the exhibition occupies the space brilliantly. There is no shortage of work by the talented and famed, including Tracey Emin’s Cunt Vernacular (1997), Tacita Dean’s The Russian Ending (2001) and some disturbing videos and paintings by Tala Madani, but it’s combined with lesser known, fresher works, too. Good use is made of the different rooms, with big, sculptural installations in the more spacious parts of the building, and drawings, photographic works and small video screens on the walls of the smaller rooms. As I mentioned there is also a ladder to climb when you fancy a bit of disappearing. But beware of the noise on the other side.

He disappeared into complete silence will be on view at De Hallen in Haarlem, The Netherlands until 4 December 2011.

John Baldessari, "Tincture of a Person Who Wants Everything," Mixed Media, 1996. Courtesy Jancar Gallery.

Alex Van Gelder had a rare privilege: he spent the last year of Louise Bourgeois’s life in her town house, photographing her. His opulent, raw images of the art goddess appear in the September issue of W Magazine, along with idiosyncratic tributes by artists and friends (Wendy Williams remembers a dinner of octopus and alcohol-soaked Klondike Bars, and Tracy Emin talks about how men peak early while women come and come). According to Van Gelder, Louise saw the photographs as an extension of her own work, and of course she did—despite its sensuous irreverence, her work has always been surprisingly holistic. It’s about being a whole package, about pulling psychology and body together seamlessly and forcefully.

In Van Gelder’s images, Louise always has props or accessories of some sort that make her appear “complete,” like  she did in the iconic portrait by Robert Mapplethorpe for which she brought her own sculpted phallus (she knew Mapplethorpe liked big penises and didn’t want to be anything short of well-endowed). One of Van Gelder’s photographs shows her in a black beanie, black sweater, and a sumptuous white fur coat with a collar that rises up around her head. You could disappear in a coat like that, though, naturally, Louise doesn’t. Wearing a dour expression, she looks like she could be a bear, a snow queen and the pope all at once.

Alex Van Gelder, portraits of Louise Bourgeois, 2010. Via W Magazine.

The coat reminds me of The Indian Uprising, a story by Donald Barthelme in which young rebels strategize about love and combat. One character, Kenneth, has a girlfriend of whom his friends are suspicious. “That girl is not in love with Kenneth,” says one to another, “she is in love with his coat. When she is not wearing it, she is huddling under it. Once I caught it going down the stairs by itself. I looked inside: Sylvia.” That Sylvia might be in love with both Kenneth and the coat, or that loving the coat might be a way of loving Kenneth, doesn’t seem to occur to either of them. People who love, or want, too many things at once are confusing.

John Baldessari made his Tincture of a Person Who Wants Everything in 1996, but it hadn’t been shown until last month, when it appeared in Jancar Gallery’s Supernatural exhibition, a show of “objects produced to understand the larger world and control one’s position within it.” It’s a red, blue and white, wall-mounted medicine bottle that looks very official. Purportedly from Midas Welby Pharmacy at 777 King Street, New York, NY 10014–an address that, a friend informed me, doesn’t exist and, if it did, would be in the Hudson River–, the bottle explains that to become the “Person Who Wants Everything,” one drop of the tincture should be added to seven ounces of water. This should be repeated daily until the tincture is gone. No refills are permitted, and patients may experience swelling of the head.

It’s been Baldessari’s summer. His work has been all over Los Angeles, at Jancar Gallery, Thomas Solomon Gallery, Margo Leavin Gallery, Gemini G.E.L. and, most notably, in Pure Beauty, a retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum of Contemporary Art (Rebecca Taylor wrote in detail about Pure Beauty for Huffingtion Post). If wanting to be everywhere, think about anything and be anyone is the same as wanting everything, then Baldessari has taken, or simply is, his own tincture. Bucking rules and making new ones, breaking down and building up, comparing and recording, co-opting, inhabiting,  measuring, reveling and intervening: Baldessari does all of this while maintaining a formalist’s fixation on composition.

John Baldessari, "Brain/Cloud (With Seascape and Palm Tree)," 2009.

Walking through Pure Beauty feels like walking through Baldessari’s brain, and it’s the brain of someone who’s curious and insatiable and badly wants to be smart and agile–he is smart and agile, of course, but it’s the wanting that drives the work.

In the retrospective’s final gallery space, insatiability hits an unfortunate stand still. Baldessari has installed his Brain/Cloud, a large white brain that protrudes from the wall against the backdrop of a blue sky. It’s as if there’s been a bit too much swelling of the head. As visitors walk past, a time-delayed live video feed catches their movement and plays it back to them seconds later, so they can watch themselves watching the brain. Like Louise Bourgeois’s matronly Maman sculptures,  the brain embodies all Baldessari has probed over his decades-long career. But Baldessari is not holistic like Louise. His wants contradict each other, and wandering endlessly around in the crevices of what a brain can be, do and desire should mean never actually seeing that brain as one unified thing.

Louise Bourgeois, "Echo I", 2007, Bronze painted white, and steel 76” x 17” x 14", Courtesy of the artist, Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco and Cheim & Read, New York; Photo courtesy of Cheim & Read, New York

This past weekend, the art world took a collective breath as it was informed of the death of a titan, French-American artist Louise Bourgeois. At the age of 98, Bourgeois had accomplished an impressive sixty-year career which, at the time of her death, was continuing to gain momentum.

Bourgeois was born December 25, 1911 in Paris, France where her artistic career started as a young child participating in her family business of tapestry restoration. She attended the Sorbonne in the 1930s, at the height of the Surrealist movement and studied in the workshop of Fernand Léger. In 1938, Bourgeois moved to New York with her husband, American Robert Goldwater (an art historian who specialized in tribal art), and again found herself in the epicenter of the artistic avant-garde, interacting with not only the European artists who were in exile from WWII, but also with the Abstract Expressionists who were claiming the spotlight. From there, Bourgeois was front and center for the subsequent artistic movements that were to follow: Pop Art, Pluralism, Identity Politics, Body Art, Feminist Art and Post-Modernism. Yet, Bourgeois’ work could never be defined as belonging to one. Rather, her work was able to incorporate aspects of all and, working in a variety of mediums, able to elevate into an entirely new category all on its own.

Bourgeois culled her childhood history and personal life as subject matter, and her works were riffed with what we can now categorize as Freudian and Lacanian theory. Growing up in Choisy-le-Roi, France, Bourgeois often references her imperious and philandering father and her mercurial mother, charging her work with sexuality, psychology and mortality.

It wasn’t until the late 60’s/early 70s that Bourgeois begin to gain recognition of her work, and once the ball started rolling, there was no slowing it down. Between 1978 and 1981, she had five-one woman shows in New York. She has participated in four separate Whitney Museum Biennales. She has represented the U.S. in the Venice Biennale and had her work included in Documenta. In the last twenty years of her career, the list of institutions which housed her solo exhibitions reads like a “Who’s Who” of international museums.

A wonderful display of her work is now on exhibit at Gallery Paule Anglim in San Francisco. The show, Mother and Child (open through June 12^th), is a collection of recent sculptures, gouache drawings and mixed media print works.  With this particular grouping of drawings, Bourgeois applied blood-red gouache onto wet paper and the affect of the absorption, in some inexplicable way, perfectly illuminates the complicated relationship of the female form with childbirth. I use the word “complicated” because Bourgeois work is such: beautiful, graphic, raw, and visceral. Additionally, Bourgeois often depicts the female form as an abstracted fertility form often encountered in ancient civilizations, reminding us that even with all our modern day technology, childbirth is just as primordial as it ever was.

Louise Bourgeois, "The Birth", 2007, Gouache on paper 23 1/2” x 18”, Courtesy of the artist, Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco and Cheim & Read, New York; Photo courtesy of Cheim & Read, New York

The central piece of the exhibition, for me, was the work THE FRAGILE, 2007, a large piece of 36, 10 x 8 inches, archival dyes on fabric. Of all the work in the front room of a female form giving birth, this piece, installed in a smaller gallery room, seems the most intimate to me. This work comprises imagery of a variety of female fertility forms and spiders, juxtaposed together into a large grid. Often, Bourgeois would discuss the association of the spider form to her mother, and it is with this knowledge that the artwork reveals itself the most to the viewer. With THE FRAGILE, Bourgeois is allowing herself to be vulnerable with her audience, trusting enough to confide in us her complicated feelings about her mother, and possibly, her own role she has played in motherhood.

Louise Bourgeois, "THE FRAGILE", 2007, Archival dyes on fabric, in 36 parts 10” x 8” inches (each), Courtesy of the artist, Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco and Cheim & Read, New York; Photo courtesy of Cheim & Read, New York

With her passing, there have been a slew of articles written about Louise Bourgeois and her contributions and positioning within art history. Many of these articles allude to the majority of her influence being felt by a largely younger, female contingency. This may be true, but one does not need to be female to appreciate and feel the power of Bourgeois’ work. One must be willing to allow him or herself to let down their walls and engage in the intimacy that Bourgeois invites the viewer to experience. In this day and age of many artists attempting to assert their identity of who and what they are in this world via their chosen medium, I defy you to find one who can strip down their psyche to such a vulnerable state as Bourgeois, while metaphorically returning your gaze.

Robert Mapplethorpe, "Louise Bourgeois in 1982 with FILLETTE, 1968", Copyright the Estate of Robert Mapplethorpe