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A SMALL exhibition of Louise Bourgeois’s work is showing at the Freud Museum in Hampstead, London. I’d never heard of Bourgeois or seen her work before but was attracted to this exhibition after reading a review in a weekend newspaper. Her sculptures are located all around the Freud Museum as well as in the rear garden. But what is of additional interest are Bourgeois’s writings which refer to her own analysis over a 30 year period.

Louise Bourgeois (Photo by Raimon Ramis)

In her essay, ‘Freud’s Toys’, Bourgeois writes that “to be an artist involves some suffering” and her work and writings at the exhibition reflect this suffering. They also show how she used writing as a form of therapy – she wrote to work through her emotional problems. I was genuinely surprised by the rawness and sheer honesty of her confessionals:

“I have failed as a wife.
As a woman.
As a mother.
As a hostess.
As an artist.
As a business woman.”

“What is it that you want?
Do you know what it is?
Is it possible?
No, why not?
Are you looking for a substitute?”

Her jottings are contained on scrap pieces of paper, notepads and even playing cards. They serve to illustrate Bourgeois’s psychological state and hatred of her father which apparently began when she was a young girl growing up in Paris. Bourgeois despised his philandering and for serially betraying her long-suffering mother. It is this anger and hatred which propel her artwork and writings – she uses them as a means to exorcise a childhood trauma. She admits herself that, for her, art was a “form of psychoanalysis.”

Many of Bourgeois’s patchwork sculptures in the exhibition could be the work of an inmate in a mental institution. In one room you see a patchwork doll with a mutilated limb; in another room a razor sharp knife hovers over another patchwork doll. To me, these sculptures represent Bourgeois’s self loathing which is also evident in her writings. Is she saying that she loathed herself so much that she contemplated suicide (the sharp knife)?

‘Maman’ (a sculpture by Louise Bourgeois)

Looming over the beautiful rear garden of the Freud Museum is a giant black steel spider. When you get up close to it you notice that it’s guarding a small, white egg. So in this one sculpture you have woman, mother (the egg) and artist (spiders weave webs) wrapped up together. The very stuff of Bourgeois’s writings and the very things she believed she failed at.

However, after seeing her work for the first time, I think she succeeded greatly. If you get the chance, do go and see this small but thought-provoking exhibition.