Louise Bourgeois

Greenberg Van Doren Gallery, New York

Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

New York, Greenberg Van Doren Gallery, Molded, Folded & Found: Louise Bourgeois, Antony Caro, John Chamberlain, Mark di Suvero, Anish Kapoor, Robert Morris, Louise Nevelson, Claes Oldenburg-Coosje van Bruggen, Frank Stella, 2008, cover and n.p., illustrated in colour

Exhibition Catalogue, Naples, Museo e Gallerie Nazionali di Capodimonte, Louise Bourgeois: per Capodimonte, 2008, pp. 52 and 67, illustration of another example in colour

Exhibition Catalogue, Herford, Museum Marta Herford, Loss of Control, 2008, p. 161, illustration of another example in colour

Exhibition Catalogue, Bogotá, Museo del Oro, Banco de la República, Dos exposiciones con el alma en el cuerpo: cuerpos amerindios: arte y cultura de las modificaciones corporales: habeas corpus: que tengas [un] cuerpo {para exponer}, 2010, p. 101, illustration of another example in colour

Elke Buhr and Pouran Esrafily, Grande Maman, Berlin 2010, cover and pp. 6, 8, 40-53, illustration of another example in colour

Exhibition Catalogue, Reykjavik, National Gallery of Iceland, Louise Bourgeois: Kona = Femme, 2011, n.p., illustration of another example in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Close inspection reveals light spots of burnishing to the tips of the figure’s hands and to the tip of the left leg. Upon very close inspection, there is a short and light rub mark below the figure’s naval.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

"To be suspended from one point is a fragile state. It implies the possibility of spinning around. Hanging is a state of vulnerability" - Louise Bourgeois

Executed in 2005, Femme belongs to Louise Bourgeois’ later and deeply significant body of work. Created when the artist was already in her nineties, Femme is a poignant and powerful reminder of the main themes and preoccupations in her art: her convoluted relationship with her own self and those close to her, femininity, motherhood and her continuous inventive use of materials. In her final years, Bourgeois would devote her creative genius to considering the subject of the family in various different forms. As well as Femme, the artist created her series of embracing couples or The Reticent Child, her celebrated commission for the Freud Museum in Vienna of 2003 in which she showed different stages in the life of her son Alain including pregnancy and birth.

Suspended in mid-air, the reclining figure of a pregnant woman looks down at her swollen belly, lips parted as if in an anguished gasp. Throughout her career, Bourgeois used an autobiographical approach to her work. While her early works are full of complex, veiled references to her childhood traumas, her later production vividly and boldly engages with them. The present work acts as a literal token of her innermost thoughts and intimate memories. The artist once explained that “My sculpture allows me to re-experience the fear, to give it a physicality so I am able to hack away at it. I am saying in my sculpture today what I could not make out in the past” (the artist cited in: Marie-Laure Bernadac and Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Eds., Louise Bourgeois: Destruction of the Father. Reconstruction of the Father. Writings and Interviews 1923 – 1997, London 1998, p. 357). When she was pregnant with her first child, Bourgeois developed a strange fear of falling – a rare condition known as Basophobia, that could arguably be considered the inspiration for this piece. Likewise, her problematic relationship with her own parents and the sense of abandonment she felt as a child when she discovered her father’s affair with her English tutor Sadie – a relationship her mother knew of and accepted – runs throughout Bourgeois’ oeuvre and metaphorically permeates her expectant figure. In Femme, Bourgeois seems to have found the courage to address the mixed feelings she had towards becoming a mother: extreme happiness but also anguish and guilt, having always been governed by the fear of not being able to be a good mother to her children: “Fallen… means that she is not up to what was expected of her” (the artist cited in: Exhibition Catalogue, London, Tate Modern (and traveling), Louise Bourgeois, 2007-09, p. 117).

Femme’s ethereal suspension lays testament to Bourgeois’ dexterous use of materials; her seemingly weightless delicacy belies the hardness of the bronze in which she is cast. In contrast with the artist’s soft, stuffed-fabric works of the same period, Bourgeois here consciously chose a material associated with the male-dominated tradition of sculpture to represent an essentially feminine experience. In hanging the work, Bourgeois not only avoided using a plinth – the canon for classical sculpture – but also imbued it with a sense of fragility, a feeling she associated with these works. Femme looks helplessly at her belly, suspended in a never-ending fall. The origin of most of Bourgeois’ hanging pieces lies too within the artist’s personal memories; her father had a passion for antique furniture and kept his collection of wooden chairs hanging from the ceiling in the family home’s attic. The young Bourgeois was undoubtedly impressed by this arrangement, a memory that she kept and later inspired works such as Femme as well as the earlier and emblematic Fillette of 1968 and The Arch of Hysteria of 1993.

In its apparent simplicity, Femme remains a token of Bourgeois’ virtuoso capacity to assemble multiple personal memories and layers of meaning. The sculpture’s sensuous forms resemble those of the pre-historic statuettes that have been interpreted as ancient fertility symbols, yet in this wonderful and delicate work, Bourgeois succeeded in adding further substance to the figure. In Femme Bourgeois exposes herself honestly. Indeed, the artist stated: “For me, sculpture is the body. My body is my sculpture” (the artist cited in: Op. Cit., p. 228).