Louise Bourgeois

Xavier Hufkens, Brussels
Collection Claude Berri, Paris
Thence by descent to the present owner

Museum of Modern Art, New York, Louise Bourgeois: Complete Books & Prints, no. 772, online

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition. The sheet is hinged verso to the mount in several places.
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“There has always been a sexual suggestiveness in my work. Sometimes I am totally concerned with female shapes – clusters of breasts like clouds – but often I merge that imagery – phallic breasts, male and female, active and passive.”

LOUISE BOURGEOIS

Exh. Cat., London, Tate Modern, Louise Bourgeois, 2007, p. 133


My Secret Life is an outstanding example from an array of works on paper that was executed in the last decade of Louise Bourgeois’ extraordinary life. Executed in a powerful four-part format, in which the repetition of the underlying etching is disrupted up by the artist’s subtle handdrawn additions, the work beautifully captures the artist’s key symbolism and unique visual vocabulary.

The medium of drawing has always been integral to Bourgeois’ work. Already from a young age she worked in her parent’s tapestry restoration studio, where she would draw the missing elements and patterns on tapestries. For Bourgeois this formed the beginning of her artistic calling - a career that began in the 1950s and would span over sixty years. Throughout these decades she created an impressive oeuvre in which her family relationships uphold a prominent position. Certain life events left a deep mark on the artist, and the range of emotions she experienced whilst dealing with her loved ones ultimately became a catalyst for her creative process, which resulted in a substantive oeuvre focused on psychoanalysis.

Hoovering between the representational and the abstract, My Secret Life is a signature piece that captures the artist’s key concerns in her unique visual language. The large-scale work consists of four column-shaped sheets, each presenting a totemic tower of breasts and phalluses stacked on top of each other, all cemented with blue and red twines that appear to reference the umbilical cord. As the artist explains: “there has always been sexual suggestiveness in my work. Sometimes I am totally concerned with female shapes –clusters of breasts like clouds –but often I merge the imagery –phallic breasts, male and female, active and passive” (Louise Bourgeois quoted in: Frances Morris, Ed., Louise Bourgeois, London 2007, p. 133).

With examples of the etching in the collections of the Tate Modern in London and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the present version of My Secret Life (which is uniquely hand-coloured), is undoubtedly an important example of Louise Bourgeois’ work. Recalling the sexual symbolism that permeates the artist’s oeuvre, My Secret Life is an equally impressive and subtle piece that perfectly captures Bourgeois’ idiosyncratic visual language.