Louise Bourgeois, Pioneering Sculptor, Has Died at 98

You can see her work here:

http://www.google.com/images?client=gmail&rls=gm&q=Louise+B...

NEW YORK—
Louise Bourgeois, the trailblazing artist whose
wide-ranging, idiosyncratic work combined abstraction and bodily forms
to uncanny ends, died yesterday in Manhattan, two days after she was
hospitalized following a heart attack. She was 98.

One of the world’s most respected artists by the time of her death, Bourgeois had an exceptionally broad career that was notable for its
slow beginnings. Born in Paris to French tapestry restorers in 1911, she
worked as an assistant for the artist Fernand Leger before moving to New York in 1938.
She did not have her first solo exhibition until June 1945, when she
was shown at New York's Bertha Schaeder Gallery, three
months before the end of World War II.

After experimenting with painting early on, Bourgeois devoted herself to sculpture in 1949, though she occasionally also produced prints and
drawings. Of her decision to abandon painting for sculpture, she told the critic Amei Wallach, “When you go from painting to this,
it means you have an aggressive thought. You want to twist the neck of a
person. I became a sculptor because it allowed me to express … what I
was embarrassed to express before.”

Though influenced by the sculpture of the Surrealists, many of whom Bourgeois became acquainted with when they took refuge in New York
during World War II, she nevertheless forged a brand of art that was
uniquely her own, frequently depicting anatomical parts — fingers, arms,
and phalluses — that grew out of geometric forms. The titles of her
sculptures, such as The Destruction of the Father, a 1974
miniature room filled with egg-like sculptures and lit with bright red
lights, suggested a close link to her biography — a personal tie that
was underscored by her rare public statements. However, despite mentions
of child abuse and her father's longtime affair with her governess, she
was hesitant to discuss her life, once telling an inquiring journalist, "Do you want
me to talk about my personal life? … I don't like to do that.”

Among her most iconic works were Filette, a 1968 plaster and latex sculpture resembling a two-foot-long penis. She later brought the
piece to a photo shoot with Robert Mapplethorpe, telling New Yorker writer Joan Acocella that she knew that
Mapplethorpe’s work was about men with big penises. Spiders, which she
associated with her mother, figured prominently in her later work,
ranging from tiny, fragile constructions to towering structures. One
compact version sold at Christie’s 2008 contemporary
art sale in Paris for $4.6 million, one of the highest prices ever paid
for a work by a living female artist.

For decades, Bourgeois held a weekly Sunday salon out of her Chelsea townhouse at which she invited artists to offer up their work for her
unbendingly blunt, honest critiques. Combative to the end, Bourgeois
announced last month that she would release a special print edition in
support of gay marriage for the Freedom to Marry
organization.
“To make a commitment to love someone forever is a beautiful thing,” she
said in a statement.

In a sense, the ascent of Bourgeois’ career charted the growing
prospects for woman artists. In 1982, her retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art was the first large-scale,
single-person show for a female artist the museum had ever held, which
came more than a half century after the institution’s founding. A series
of retrospectives followed, including a well-received exhibition that
visited the Guggenheim in 2008.