I wrote a letter to Art in america protesting Louise Bourgeois or Robert Rauschenberg not being on the cover of the September issue that was too accurate and satirical vis a vis Tom Sachs for them to publish. A pyrrhic victory – however by distributing handwritten photocopies all over last fall several people suggested I blog and so I have.

The show at the Guggenheim was a monster show befitting une monstre sacree and Robert Storr’s lecture was compelling too. I said in graduate school if anyone still alive deserves the title of genius it is the LB, still working as we internet, in to her nineties.

I also agree about the Bourgeois– love her work but it needed a decaying mansion on a field, not the cold ramps of the Guggenheim.

And nice use of “fellate” my friend.

In every period there’s work that moves me: the cast bronzes, the carved marbles, the painted wood. Genereally speaking, though, I’d say I’m least enamored of two bodies of work
. Some of the “Cells”
. Her recent soft sculptures

The cells are unsettling. It’s not that I don’t like them; indeed, some are quite compelling, even poetic. But in general I feel uncomfortable witnessing that much of her personal trauma. As for the soft sculptures, at close to 100 years old, she is surely limited by how and what she is able to manipulate.

That said, Cheim and Read showed a fabric work of hers in it’s “bones” show in October 07 that was powerfully unsettling. Using some chicken bones and what looked to be pantyhose, she created a figure that looked to be arching either in orgasmic ecstacy or in the throes of death–petit mort or mort, as it were. (Here’s the link to the my post of that show, which includes her sculpture: http://joannemattera.blogspot.com/2007/10/skeleton-crew-boning-up-in-chelsea.html)

Then this past fall, Cheim & Read showed white-painted bronze casts of clothing she’d stretched vertically, very totemlike, reminiscent of her earliest work shown at the Guggenheim–those stacked totems made from materials she found on her roof. This was powerful work by an artist of any age working in any medium.

So I guess what I’m saying is that I really love the whole of her oeuvre, even if there are some elements within it that I just don’t love quite as much.

Though I have a question for you Joanne, what do you think of the late Bourgeois versus her early art? Or do you prefer her whole body of work equally? I’m also curious what people see as the most interesting aspects of her work.

The big quarter-dome of gooey red wax being ever reformed by that slowly arc-ing arm was sufficient reason to see and love Kapoor’s show.

As for Bourgeois, I loved the show; spent hours on those infernal ramps. I’ve said this before, but if Bourgeois had been born with one of those penises she’s so fond of making, she’d be bigger than Picasso. (Yes, that drilling sound is the randy old bald one whirring in his grave.)