Louise Bourgeois' art on display in Florence chronicles the human psyche

From June 22 to October 20, 2024, the Museo Novecento and the Museo degli Innocenti in Florence are hosting exhibitions with the titles: Louise Bourgeois in Florence - Do Not Abandon me and Cell XVIII (Portrait). A project that brings the works of Louise Bourgeois (Paris, 1911 - New York, 2010) to Florence for the first time, building a significant relationship between her creations and the exhibition context. Coinciding with the 10th anniversary of its opening, the Museo Novecento celebrates Louise Bourgeois, one of the absolute protagonists of 20th and 21st century art, with the exhibition Do Not Abandon Me curated by Philip Larratt-Smith and Sergio Risaliti in collaboration with The Easton Foundation. The exhibition features nearly one hundred works by the artist, including many on paper, including gouaches and drawings, made in the 2000s as well as sculptures of various sizes, in fabric, bronze, marble and other materials. Also on display in the museum courtyard is Spider Couple from 2003, one of the most famous and emblematic creations. For the occasion, the collaboration with the Istituto degli Innocenti will be revived: a space founded in 1419 as a hospital with the purpose of taking in children without family care. In the complex designed by Filippo Brunelleschi, the Museum will host Cell XVIII (Portrait), a work resonating with the history and collection of the Innocenti, chosen by Philip Larratt-Smith in dialogue with Arabella Natalini, director of the Museo degli Innocenti, and Stefania Rispoli, curator of the Museo Novecento.

Louise Bourgeois grew up just outside Paris, where her parents ran a tapestry restoration workshop. Her childhood was marked by a complicated relationship with her family, which led to traumatic experiences that were a major source of inspiration for her art. The scale and materials of her works vary as much as the forms, which oscillate between abstraction and figuration. Emotions such as loneliness, jealousy, anger and fear are thus the common threads in his work. Through her art, Bourgeois investigated the complex dynamics of the human psyche and often stated that the creative process was a form of exorcism: a way of reconstructing memories and emotions in order to break free from their grip. Although she devoted herself extensively to painting and drawing, over the years it was mainly sculpture that would constitute a fundamental part of her work, all centered on autobiographical elements, family tensions and traumas, often reworked in a metaphorical key. Bourgeois thus opened up to a poetics capable of exorcising trauma and inhibitions. The exhibition Do Not Abandon Me, will occupy almost the entirety of the Ex Leopoldine building, between the ground and second floor rooms. It is the most important review of Louise Bourgeois’ red gouaches with a focus on the motif of mother and child. The title of the exhibition refers to the fear of abandonment, and the anxieties related to motherhood that Bourgeois has always harbored. Made in the last five years of her career, the gouaches explore the cycles of life through an iconography of sexuality, birth, motherhood, addiction and flowers. Red, among the most recurrent colors in the artist’s work, evokes within the gouaches bodily fluids, such as blood and amniotic fluid. Of particular interest is Louise Bourgeois’ collaboration with British artist Tracey Emin (Margate, 1963). The exhibition will also feature a series of sixteen digital prints on fabric titled Do Not Abandon Me (2009-10), which grew out of a meeting between the two artists.

The Museum’s cloister will also host Spider Couple, one of the artist’s famous spiders, made in bronze. The exhibition will also be complemented by the display of two installations: Peaux de Lapins, Chiffons Ferrailles à Vendre dating from 2006 and Cells. The 2002 work Cross will also be presented in the building’s former church, where in its time women were forbidden to enter during the celebration of religious rites, as evidenced by the women’s gallery also separated by iron grilles. As has often been pointed out, the spider represents for Bourgeois a symbol of the mother figure that can be interpreted as the embodiment of extreme intelligence, a protective figure who provides for her young by building a home and ensuring food. But it is also the manifestation of a threatening and disturbing presence, an expression of an underlying hostility and aggression that collects and encapsulates traumatic experiences from the depths of the unconscious. Thus the installation of the work Spider Couple in the Renaissance cloister becomes emblematic. The Museo Novecento also premieres Spider, a floor sculpture composed of a bronze spider and a marble egg, never before exhibited to the public.

Likewise, the choice to exhibit Peaux de lapins, chiffons ferrailles à vendre with references to the life of the monastic community that animated the history of the Ex Leopoldine appears revealing. Among the latest works belonging to the Cells series, which were first presented to the public in 1991 at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the title of the work refers to a childhood memory, that of the cries of rag pickers engaged in selling goods on the street. Within the cell Bourgeois inserts a number of sculptural elements that recall her personal and family history, such as cloth sacks and rabbit skins: components referable to the empty female belly and, more literally, to the animals hunted and raised by her family members. The name of the series also plays on the multiple meanings of the word ’cell,’ which can be translated into Italian as both ’cell’ and ’cell.’ Although belonging to the same cycle as Peaux de Lapins, the subject enclosed in Cell XVIII (Portrait) seems to reinterpret the iconography of Our Lady of Mercy, recurring in some of the most emblematic works in the collection and strongly representative of the institution’s vocation of hospitality. Simultaneously with the Louise Bourgeois in Florence project, as many as three exhibitions in other Italian cities, also dedicated to the great artist, will take place during the same period. From June 21 to September 15, L’inconscio della memoria (The Unconscious of Memory ) will open to the public at the Galleria Borghese in Rome, and at Villa Medici the exhibition No Exit. Naples will also pay tribute to Louise Bourgeois, with the exhibition Rare Language at Galleria Trisorio, which will be open from June 25 to Sept. 28. The exhibition will feature a new episode of the Labirinto900 podcast by singer-songwriter and historian Letizia Fuochi on the figure of Louise Bourgeois.

“The Cells represent various kinds of pain: physical pain, emotional and psychological pain, mental and intellectual pain. When does emotional pain become physical? And the physical one, when does it become emotional? It is an endless cycle. Pain can originate anywhere and move in one direction or the other. Every Cell has to do with fear. Fear is pain. It is often not perceived as such, because it always masks itself. Each Cell has to do with voyeur pleasure, the thrill of watching and being watched. Cells either attract us or repel us. There is this urgency to integrate, merge or disintegrate,” the artist said.

Photo: Ela Bialkowska - OKNO Studio

Louise Bourgeois' art on display in Florence chronicles the human psyche

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