Louise Bourgeois, the influential sculptor, died at Beth Israel Hospital yesterday at age 98. The managing director of her studio said Bourgeois had suffered a heart attack two days earlier. In its obituary, the NY Times wrote that Bourgeois, "the French-born American artist...gained fame only late in a long career, when her psychologically charged abstract sculptures, drawings and prints had a galvanizing effect on the work of younger artists, particularly women."
Bourgeois began with painting and then moved onto sculpture in 1949. From ArtInfo:
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...
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.
Bourgeois also gave Sunday salons in her downtown townhouse. She once said, "I have a religious temperament. I have not been educated to use it. I’m afraid of power. It makes me nervous. In real life, I identify with the victim. That’s why I went into art."
