拍品 139
  • 139

LOUISE BOURGEOIS | Untitled (Chairs)

估價
300,000 - 400,000 GBP
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招標截止

描述

  • 露易絲·布爾喬亞
  • Untitled (Chairs)
  • incised with the artist's initials on one side
  • steel, mirror and glass
  • 18.4 by 59.1 by 30.5 cm. 7 1/4 by 23 1/4 by 12 in.
  • Executed in 1998, this work is unique.

來源

Galerie Karsten Greve, Cologne (acquired directly from the artist)
Viktor and Marianne Langen, Meerbusch
Private Collection (thence by descent)
Christie's, London, 1 July 2014, Lot 66
Acquired from the above by the present owner

展覽

Vienna, Kunsthalle Wien, Louise Bourgeois / Jenny Holzer / Helmut Lang, October 1998 - January 1999, p. 17, illustrated
Cologne, Galerie Karsten Greve, Louise Bourgeois, February - March 1999, p. 123, illustrated in colour

Condition

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although there are less magenta undertones in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There is light oxidation in places which is in keeping with the artist's choice of materials. Close inspection reveals some faint scratches and light burnishing to the bronze element and some superficial scratches and two tiny specks of media to the glass element.
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拍品資料及來源

Executed in 1998, at the peak of Louise Bourgeois’ artistic maturity, Untitled (Chairs) is a mysterious and powerful work that perfectly epitomises the artist’s fascinating canon. By the late 90s, Bourgeois was a widely recognised figure, after her long-overdue retrospective at MoMA in 1982 finally propelled her career and garnered critical acclaim worldwide. Jewel-like in its composition, Untitled (Chairs) displays miniature-seized elements that are central to the artist’s late practice; five chairs – a number that appears throughout her oeuvre, signifying each of her family members – have been delicately placed around a glass orb, in which another chair faces a mirror standing menacingly above it. Here, Bourgeois masterfully blends materials as diverse as bronze and glass in an intimate, almost domestic setting to create a miniature Wunderkammer that is at once inviting and quasi-claustrophobic, a duality that the artist appropriated and explored throughout her career. Reminiscent of one of the Bourgeois’ most important bodies of work, the Cells, which she worked on from 1986 until she passed away in 2010, Untitled (Chairs) shares with these a theatrical format, inviting the viewer to look into the work rather than at it. However, while the Cells are architectural spaces in themselves, Bourgeois cleverly plays with scale to render the present work, focusing the gaze of the viewer on the central element of the composition, the glass orb containing a chair and a mirror in opposition. Furthermore, Bourgeois’ Cells contained elements that the artist found in her home, or scavenged from the neighbouring streets. Untitled (Chairs), on the other hand, has been painstakingly built, each element carefully placed in its position in order to build up an almost palpable tension within the artwork.

Her choice of materials in the present work is not arbitrary either; the artist has explained how the incorporation of glass in her sculptures “suggests the infinite fragility of the human person. The artist retreats into the handling of materials, because any materials – marble, bronze, plaster, wax, plastic – are less fragile than human relationships. If I talk to you, I might break everything. But that’s not my fault; I can be very, very sorry afterwards. But a break in glass can never be hidden” (Louise Bourgeois cited in: Robert Storr, Intimate Geometries: The Art and Life of Louise Bourgeois, London 2016, p. 516). Indeed, the fragile surface of the glass structure that protects the elements within it could be seen as a metaphor for the artist’s often troubled relationships. Mirrors, too, hold a particular place within the artist’s unique vocabulary: “Mirror means the acceptance of the self. So, I have lived in a house without mirrors because I couldn’t stand, I couldn’t accept myself… So instead of seeing the mirror as a symbol of vanity – no danger here – I saw the mirror as a symbol of acceptance” (Louise Bourgeois cited in: Marie-Laure Bernadac and Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Louise Bourgeois: Deconstruction of the Father – Reconstruction of the Father. Writings and Interviews 1923 – 1997, p. 260). Thus, in the present work, Bourgeois does what she knows best and delves into the intimate realm of her own psyche. The central element in the present sculpture could stand as a test for herself – must the artist look at herself in the mirror and face who she really is? Who are the spectators that sit outside? Are they her own family, as the number of chairs suggests?

From a very young age Bourgeois felt contradictory feelings towards her own family. Natural, filial affection towards her parents was trumped by the discovery of her father’s affair with her live-in English governess and his philandering nature, while her mother’s knowledge of the affair also elicited mixed feelings of love and rejection towards her. Later on in her life, when she became a mother herself, feelings of guilt and doubt often troubled Bourgeois and made their way into her work; the fear and trauma of abandonment permeating her works on paper with frantically drawn lines and her sculptures with an underlying sense of fragility and pain. Indeed, in Untitled (Chairs) Bourgeois skilfully explores the feeling of physical isolation or solitude within a wider group, in this occasion her closest relatives. In its uncomplicated, elegant execution Untitled (Chairs) is a poignant statement by one of the most important artists of the twentieth century, one who fearlessly addressed some of the most difficult subjects that an artist could preoccupy themselves with. As she candidly explained: “The subject of pain is the business that I am in. to give meaning and shape to frustration and suffering” (Louise Bourgeois cited in: Doris von Drathen, ‘The Forbidden Fruit’, Exh. Cat. Hannover, Kestner-Gesellschaft, Louise Bourgeois, September – October 1994, p. 8).