Paz Monge

ARTH 433 – Visual Arts in the U.S 1935-1970

Dr. Helen Langa

Spring 2016

Louise Bourgeois Cells: A Pandora’s Box into the Unconscious

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Within the fine grain of Louise Bourgeois work lie numerous contrasts that incite

controversy and thought provoking imagery. Her involvement in the Modernist art scene shines a

light to radical sculpture and installations. Louise Bourgeois is best known for her colossal

sculpture, Maman, which presents a giant spider, casted in bronze, stainless steel and marble.

Nonetheless, it is in her Cells series where we encounter a more profound biographical insight into

the artist’s life and body of work. The innovative and challenging character of Louise Bourgeois’

Cells installations is unambiguously witnessed in the nature of the responses these works have

received: the Cells have been flooded with psychological and psychoanalytic interpretations, which

have cemented Bourgeois’ association with the psychology of art. These Cells – self enclosed

sculptural and architectural spaces –allow viewers to revisit different memories or moments in

Bourgeois’ past. Primarily, the multiplicity of questions and sentiments the works arouse confirm

the need to examine the motifs present. Furthermore, the multiplicity of attempts to provide

similar examinations underscores Bourgeois’ success in propelling critical discourse to encompass

psychoanalytic and feminist theories.

As a central exponent of 20th century modernist sculpture, Louise Bourgeois centered her

work in both autobiographical moments and psychological theories. The following essay examines

these foundations and motivations from which the Cells were developed. The installations will be

discussed in relation to Bourgeois’ complicated biography and previous paintings and drawings,

specifically Femme Maison, so as to unveil the psychoanalytic considerations within which the

former are embedded. The relationship between the audience and the Cells will also be explored,

so as to unveil a fundamental contrast between the participation of the audience in the work of

art and the private experience encapsulated in the Cell’s public staging. The binary between

interior and exterior will prevail through out the whole analysis, and will show itself as one of the

main elements present in Cells for both Bourgeois and the audience. By focusing on one Cell out of

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a series of thirty-nine – Passage Dangereux from 1997– the following work will seek to expose the

inherit psychoanalytic approach found in Bourgeois’ method. Bourgeois’ projection of several

biographical issues in each installation points towards a relation to the memory of unaccomplished

desires. This work examines only one cell due to its immensity and vast amount of visual and

psychological motifs. Late psychoanalytic theory, with an emphasis on Jacques Lacan’s concept of

Jouissance, will help illuminate how desire innately produces pain in a subject. Insofar as

Bourgeois’ childhood and family substantially informed the imagery present in her installations,

biographical considerations will play an essential role within our analysis. As Bourgeois states, “my

childhood has never lost its magic, it has never lost its mystery, and it has never lost its drama.”1

Part I. Biography

Louise Bourgeois was born in 1911 in Paris, France. She was raised in Paris as well, where

she developed a strong interest in the arts by working in her family’s business restoring tapestries.

Nevertheless, her childhood was tainted as she found out that her father was having an affair with

her English governess. Not only was Bourgeois destroyed by this incident, but it would also

influence most of her oeuvre. Her mother, Louise, was aware of her husband’s adultery, yet she

decided to ignore it so as to preserve an image of family unit. Bourgeois always regarded her

mother as a figure of power and determination, as she would not allow her family to be

disintegrated because of an affair. However, the ambiance of hypocrisy and disloyalty in her house

would cause a psychological disorder in Bourgeois.

A few years following the affair, Bourgeois’ mother passed away unexpectedly, bringing

the artist to suffer an emotional dismantlement. Though Bourgeois regarded her mother as a

strong woman, their relationship was filled with contradictions. As Bourgeois makes clear in her

diary, “When my mother said something, the building shook and my father fled. She had a lot of

1 Louise Bourgeois, Destruction of the Father Reconstruction of the Father: Writings and Interviews, 1923-1997 (Cambridge, MA: MIT,1998) 1.

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women working for her and she had to be forceful. Even today I am still afraid of what I think of as

the ‘Angry Mother.’”2 Bourgeois’ mother would later on influence her most famous work, Maman

(Figure 1.1), which offers an evident comparison between her mother’s personality and a giagantic

spider. The arachnid motif resurfaces in several of the Cells as a clear invocation to Bourgeois’

childhood memories and views on motherhood.

In 1940, Bourgeois moves to New York City, after marrying Robert Goldwater, an American

art historian and curator. It was not until Bourgeois moved to America that she started producing

and experimenting with sculpture. Her artistic training relied mostly on printmaking and drawing,

due to all her acquired experience in the family business.3 Immigrating to America brought

Bourgeois into contact with a new aesthetic, which spurred artistic creation. Reflecting upon her

expatriation, Bourgeois states: “Even though I am French, I cannot think of one of these pictures

being painted in France. Every one of these pictures is American, from New York. I love this city, its

clean-cut look, its sky, its buildings, its scientific, cruel, romantic quality.”4 Bourgeois’ love for New

York City would help her unveil her most traumatic memories in her installations, and as well it

would give her a platform to start exhibiting her art with the New York art scene. Bourgeois past

memories and traumas became the sole inspiration of her work. Though scholars and critics

associated her with several art movements – including Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism –

she always rejected labels, stating that her work could not be summarized in a category. 5

Part II. From drawing to sculpture

The concerns for sexuality, childhood, motherhood, and pain espoused in abstract designs

find an almost literal rendition in Bourgeois early drawings and prints. While most of these themes

2 Bourgeois, Destruction of the Father Reconstruction of the Father: Writings and Interviews, 1923-1997, 113.3 Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress and the Tangerine. DVD. Directed by Marion Cajori and Amei Wallach. (2008, Zeitgeist Films)4 Bourgeois, Destruction of the Father Reconstruction of the Father: Writings and Interviews, 1923-1997, 455 Ibid., 351

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would later translate into her sculptural work, their pictorial representation offers insightful

contrasts. Femme Maison (Figure 1.2), one of Bourgeois’ early paintings, illustrates an allegory of

confinement present as well in Cells. The lower fraction of a woman’s body enclosed in a house is

depicted, with all of the female genitalia and breast fully exposed, though drawn with soft

rounded lines paired with flesh tone colors. On the upper part of the house a shape suggestive of a

flame shines and flashes out of the roof. In contrast with the curvaceous female body, the house

creates a contrast with its sharp lines, gray colors and stiff appearance. The female head is

concealed in the house, including the shoulders and the head, creating a clear division between

the household and naked body. The symbol of the house plays a vital role in the dynamic between

inside and outside: the female body is exposed while the head is hidden. A forced link to

domesticity in the female mind emerges.

Bourgeois produced several versions of Femme Maison, all in which the symbolic home

replaces the female head. Addressing the evident connotation to domesticity, Julienne Lotz notes

how “Since Bourgeois’ Femme Maison paintings have windows and doors, a certain permeability

and perhaps communication between buildings’ inner and outer worlds is implied, in a similar way

that the aforementioned drawing allows for an exchange between inside and outside…” 6 Lotz

mentions how there is an implicit dialogue between the realms of “inside” and “outside,” urging

the viewer into the tension of this binary. One of Bourgeois’ works’ most is the deliberate tension

between being the viewer and actually being “outside” but also trying to investigate what is

“inside.” This tension will develop even more drastically within the architectural spaces of the

Cells. Lotz expands on the significance of the house in Femme maison stating, “While a house can

be a place of safety, providing a protective skin shielding the private person from the public, it is,

in addition, a place that silently bears witness to the occurrences within: it absorbs traces left by

6 Julienne Lotz, Louise Bourgeois: Structures of Existence: The Cells (Munich: Haus Der Kunst, 2015), 22

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its inhabitants, physically storing the past as a place for memories.”7 The themes of secrecy and

protection found in the element of “the house” resonate in Bourgeois’ biographical memories,

shining light to her father’s affair and her silence about it. Her Parisian home evolved into a place

to store secrets, lies and silence about the state of the family. The privacy component in the

“inside” fraction of the binary evokes a desire for the viewer to discover it from the outside.

Bourgeois continued to experiment in sculpture with this duality between privacy and exteriority,

restricted and public, inside and outside. Nevertheless, Femme maison remains as an emblem and

conceptual beginning to what the Cells series were about to become.

Part III. Cells

During the late 1980’s and 1990’s, Bourgeois produced her most personal and largest body

of work, the Cells series. She gave birth to the term “Cell” during the preparations of her display in

the Carnegie International Exhibition of 1991, where the first six Cells were presented.8 Bourgeois

had already incorporated performance art and installations work within her oeuvre. Nonetheless,

none of her work yet spoke so explicitly about her past. During the development and construction

of the Cells, Bourgeois begins to endeavor into massive scale installation, creating her first Maman

(Figure 1.1) spider in 1991. Each cell is constructed from a large cage of wooden doors, glass in

metal frames, or a variety of flat enclosing found objects which define a container for different

elements: tapestries, clocks, bedroom furniture, mirrors or dolls. They singularly symbolize and

represent different types of pain that the artist endured throughout her life9. Thus, the Cells are

not specifically related to each other, though when taken collectively we notice an urge for them

to integrate, merge or disintegrate.10

7 Lotz, Louise Bourgeois: Structure of Existence: The Cells, 228 "Louise Bourgeois. Structures of Existence: The Cells." Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. September 25, 2015. Accessed April 25, 2016. http://garagemca.org/en/event/louise-bourgeois-structures-of-existence-the-cells.9 Marie-Laure Bernadac, and Louise Bourgeois. Louise Bourgeois (Paris: Flammarion, 1996), 12110 Bourgeois, Destruction of the Father Reconstruction of the Father: Writings and Interviews, 1923-1997, 205

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Bourgeois’ cell Passage Dangereux (Figure 1.3) of 1997 develops as a narrative adventure,

a hallway of memories that incite a voyeuristic sentiment within the audience. Passage Dangereux

is Bourgeois biggest cell, laid out in a linear form, resembling an enclosed hallway, filled with seven

small rooms containing a variety of sculptural elements.11 The composition inside the cell

juxtaposes the visual chaos of the objects with the order imposed by the dividing cell room walls.

A new personal architecture emerges in the cell which establishes visual and psychological limits

to the viewer understanding of the artist’s past. The audience is welcomed to walk around the

artwork, though the space was originally meant to be traversed. This gigantic installation radiates

a psychological and dramatic atmosphere, due to the hypersensitivity attributed to the found

objects. Some of the sculptural motifs present in the chambers include: an electric chair, rabbit

ears, mirrors and a variety of bones. Each of these elements might take on a personal role in

Bourgeois’ past, alluding to her childhood and maternity issues, but some are also objects that

reminded her about a spontaneous occurrence or thought she had. The elements present inside

Passage Dangereux represents an access to both the artist’s biographical tale and unconscious

realm. The complex visual vocabulary of the installation exemplifies the multifaceted storyline

behind it. Nancy Spector describes the work as “psychic space replete with personal associations;

it is, therefore, an architectural self portrait, as were so many of her early Femme maison

renderings.”12 Due to the large scale of the installation, Bourgeois has the opportunity to explore

several memories, portrayed in each of the rooms. One of the first rooms describes visually her

tumultuous paternal relationship. Spector approaches the cell with a sequential or linear agenda

to it, delineating Bourgeois experiences. She states:

In the first chamber to the left we see a vertical arrangement of six small metal shelves, each holding a starched white linen cuff with the name “Bourgeois” written in script. This is the realm of the father, who is introduced to us here as a dandy. […] The last shelf also

11 Nancy Spector, Louise Bourgeois: Structures of Existence: The Cells (Munich: Haus Der Kunst, 2015),7512 Spector, Louise Bourgeois: Structures of Existence: The Cells, 75

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holds an empty bottle of Shalimar, the artist’s signature perfume and surrogate self portrait that appears in a number of her Cells. The conflict between a judgmental, philandering father and a spurned daughter is symbolized by this simple, stark arrangement, which also pits the seduction of femininity against the dominating “grip” of the paternal.13

Spector’s reading on the first room of Passage Dangereux demonstrates a complicated childhood

and Bourgeois’ resentment towards her father. This allows the following key point to emerge: the

cell’s metaphorical evolves into window looking to Bourgeois’ memory. In this case, the window

translates her resentment towards her father and introduces the emptiness that he caused on her.

The room also contains two delicate carved rabbit ears, which introduce childish elements into the

narrative. Bourgeois plays with her staple contrast between “inside” and “outside” by forcing the

viewer – ignorant of the ensuing scenario – to approach this extremely personal scene from the

outside. At the same time, however, the artist gives the audience the possibility of identifying with

her memories, triggering emotions and unconscious thoughts with her highly selective motifs.

Bourgeois’ intent of bring back her memories and conceptualizing them through sculpture is

regarded not only as the artists inviting the viewer into past, but also as a tool of conscious or

unconscious self-discovery.

Furthermore, Passage Dangereux retains more than just one memory for Bourgeois. As

mentioned before, the cell, which resembles a corridor, contains seven different rooms with a

variety of motifs and sculptures. Most of the memories present in the piece circulate back to

Bourgeois’ angst and resentment towards her father. By deconstructing another specific area of

the installation, Ann Coxon states: “Passage Dangereux, the largest of these works, takes the form

of a corridor with several rooms, encompassing all manner of dusty old objects, including hanging

chairs that for Bourgeois recalled the chairs her father stored as part of his restoration business. A

tapestry hangs in one of the smaller spaces.”14 Bourgeois strong association with her father and his

13 Ibid, 7614 Ann Coxon, LB: Louise Bourgeois (London: Tate, 2010), 64

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eminent presence in almost all of her art speaks to Passage Dangereux’s strong narrative and

retrospective quality. Yet, it would be short sighted to categorize all of Bourgeois’ work as simply

melancholic or nostalgic towards her father. Each of the elements that Coxon describes also

pertains to Bourgeois’ unconscious, and personal attachments she possessed with all the elements

involved in Passage Dangereux. The viewer is allowed “inside” Bourgeois’ past, but always in an

alienated position.

Additionally to the chairs hanging from the upper part of the cage, Bourgeois included a

prosthetic leg among them. The leg stands out not only because of its obvious structural

difference, but also because of the symbolical difference it entices between the single seated

furniture and a synthetic aid for walking. Jerry Gorovoy, Bourgeois’ studio assistant in New York,

explains the artists thought process behind the incorporation of the prosthetic leg. He argues:

When she was young, Louise worked as a docent at the Louvre, where many injured soldiers from the First World War were also employed. She used to describe going to the cafeteria and seeing all these amputees and feeling repulsed. She also lived in an apartment on the Rue de Seine, in the 1930’s, and had a neighbor who made prosthetic devices. And her sister, Henriette, walked with a limp. All of the sudden, this one encounter of finding this discarded prosthesis triggered all these associations that, consciously or unconsciously, influenced the formation of the work. Louise saw the prosthesis as a metaphor for her own psychic injuries, and how we are all handicapped and look for way to survive.15

Gorovy’s insight into Bourgeois’ artistic process proves two main qualities about the artist and the

Cells installations. Firstly, we find evidence to Bourgeois’ highly susceptible personality, with the

cells being a clear representation of memories. A comparison between the prosthetic leg and the

hanging chairs exemplify how Bourgeois representation of memories and thoughts were not

necessarily linked to each other, but rather spontaneously arranged in artistic creation. Secondly,

Gorovy’s explanation portrays the stratification noticeable in both Bourgeois’ character and

Passage Dangereux. The installation functions in several different layers. First, Bourgeois’ “inside”

15 Jerry Gorovy, Louise Bourgeois: Structures of Existence: The Cells, 41

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emerges: memories and thoughts gain sculptural representation. Second, each layer triggers a

visual reminiscence, allowing the audience to explore not only Bourgeois feelings from the

outside, but also its own thoughts and memories. The artist’s play with the “inside/outside”

binary in Passage Dangereux demonstrates her willingness to expose herself to the public, though

always keeping a figurative barrier (the cage) between the audience and her work. Nevertheless,

this barrier, which places the viewer in a voyeuristic state, creates a psychological atmosphere in

the installation, and gives room for unconscious self-discovery.

PART IV. Lacan, desire and the audience.

Despite Bourgeois’ personal animosity against Lacanians,16 the themes of childhood,

father-daughter relationship, and her obsessive desire for the past can be productively illuminated

through Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory. This theory challenges the Freudian clinical

approach to psychoanalysis. Desire and the unconscious encompass most of Lacan’s research and

work, which philosophically examines the main factors that lead human desires, anxieties, and

psychosis. The exploration of the unconscious through imagery and sculpture conformed a large

portion of Bourgeois’ inspiration behind her artwork. The importance of Bourgeois’ psychoanalytic

theme dealing with binaries of inside and outside and her biographical ambition are thus best

illustrated through a Lacanian lens.

In his early seminars – recorded in Ecrits – Lacan establishes the concept of Jouissance. As

the French philosopher enigmatically writes: “[…] is this Jouissance, the lack of which makes the

Other inconsistent, mine, then? Experience proves that it is usually forbidden me, not only as

certain fools would have it.”17 In other words, Jouissance could be considered a painful pleasure,

an element that the subject seeks which will provide both pleasure and pain. Fractions of the pain

16 Bourgeois, during one of her interviews, stated, “I distrust the Lacans and Bossuets because they gargle with their own words”. 17 Lacan, Jacques. Ecrits. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002) 694.

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coming from this pleasure are due to the subject’s prohibition of experiencing the pleasure.

Further, Lacan states: “We must keep in mind that Jouissance is prohibited to whoever speaks, as

such – or, put differently, it can only be said between the lines by whoever is a subject of the

Law.”18 Due to the flexibility of the pleasure/pain binary found in Jouissance, its desire could be

described as an action or a word. Language fails in the realm of Jouissance, letting the passion and

desire drive the subject.

Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory finds a place in Louise Bourgeois’ Cells installations, as these

artworks embody Bourgeois persistent desire to reimagine and reconstruct her past. Coxon

reflects upon Bourgeois’ familiarity with psychoanalysis, explaining how “Bourgeois had

contemplated graduate study in the psychology of art with a potential of becoming a child

therapist. […] Her understanding of psychoanalysis and her ability to tap into her own

subconscious, coupled with her capacity to produce sculpture truly challenged some dominant,

phallocentric ways of looking at art.”19 In this specific case, Bourgeois experiments with her desire

of recapturing her past. This desire translates into the artists’ own Jouissance, as her past both

brings her pain and pleasure. As mentioned earlier, Bourgeois had a traumatic childhood, which

she formulates into various installations. As clearly visible in Passage Dangereux, the artist

embodies Jouissance into her corridor-shaped cell, as it tells the narrative for her trying to

reconcile both positive and negative memories of her past. Her use of found objects that speak to

her unconscious and trigger her memories contribute to her constant pursing of her unsatisfied

Jouissance. Her body of work reflects her quest to express her past. Bourgeois claimed that her

childhood never lost its magic, mystery and drama.20 Her constant self-discovery in her work

implies the supposition of many more stories yet to be told.

18 Lacan, Ecrits, 19619 Coxon, LB: Louise Bourgeois, 4520 Louise Bourgeois, Destruction of the Father Reconstruction of the Father: Writings and Interviews, 1923-1997, 1

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Moreover, the formalization and visual representation of Desire and Jouissance through

found objects in the Cells are put into play in Bourgeois’ work and Lacan’s late seminars as well.

Bruce Fink, a Lacanian psychoanalyst, describes in his book A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian

Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique, the complex dialectic of desire for Lacan, arguing, “human

desire, strictly speaking, has no object. Indeed, it doesn’t quite know what to do with objects.

When you get what you want, you cannot want it anymore because you already have it. Desire

disappears when it attains its ostensible object.”21 As mentioned before, desire can never be truly

satisfied or conceptualized. Nevertheless, Bourgeois use of multiple found objects in Passage

Dangereux explicitly represents the lack of an object in her Jouissance/desire. Her incorporation of

extremely different objects, which don’t necessarily have a precise connection between them,

illustrates the artist’s struggle to illustrate her desire with one single object. One could argue that

the installation, Passage Dangereux, as a whole, is her object of desire. Yet, the visual elements,

sculptures and rigid architecture of the cell denote her inner contradiction regarding her desire.

Lacan’s explanation and deconstruction of human desire illuminates a psychoanalytic approach to

Bourgeois Cells installations, shining light on her constant representation of her past and it’s the

possible motives behind it, but also to the Bourgeois’ interest for her unconscious and what might

visually emerge from it.

Within this psychoanalytic context, Bourgeois’ subsequent efforts of allowing the audience

to have a unique and personal connection with her Cells have demonstrated a Meta commentary

in the viewer and artist. Bourgeois’ work sets up a stage for her biographical narrative but also for

her audience’s intimate and unique experience with the cell. Alex Potts draws a clear distinction

between the two subtle environments created by the Cells in the gallery space, claiming “the cells

evoke two distinct yet overlapping psychodramas, one played out on the interior stage of the

21 Bruce Fink, A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1997), 51

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sculpture, and one on the more open stage of the gallery space encompassing viewer and work.

Bourgeois herself was acutely conscious of the significance of the latter. 'Each Cell', she

commented, 'deals with the pleasure of the voyeur, the thrill of looking and being looked at”22

Potts argument on the “pleasure of the voyeur” sheds light to Jacques Lacan Jouissance, as

pleasure is found in looking into these cells. Jouissance is present when the viewer finds a desire

to look into these caged cells. The restrictions and limits of the audience into the cell foment the

Jouissance, and create a voyeuristic atmosphere around the installation. Bourgeois’ inside and

outside binary not only create two different environments for the viewer, but also project a new

metaphysics in the installation, inciting instant Jouissance to the audience.

Bourgeois productive career pushed her to work until her late 80’s, creating her last cell in

2008, two years before her death. The Cells series became a medium of expression that elevated

installation work and architecture to another personal level of expression. It is undeniable how

significant and influential Bourgeois’ past and childhood was to her work, inspiring almost 60 years

of artistic work based on memories and accounts in her unconscious. Louise Bourgeois work, in a

sculptural context, portrays the outstanding personal reach installations can have. One can see

that her work served more than just another avante garde experiment, but rather as a snapshot of

her memory, psychoanalysis and powerful compositions. Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic model

presented in his Ecrits serves the purpose of complementing Bourgeois’ work on a higher

theoretical framework. Bourgeois’ legacy is more than just giant spiders, but also rooms that were

able to capture a glimpse of her life.

22 Alex Potts, “Louise Bourgeois: Sculptural Confrontations”. Oxford Art Journal 22.2 (1999): 52

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Appendix:

Figure 1.1: Louise Bourgeois, Femme Maison, 1946

Figure 1.2: Louise Bourgeois, Maman, 1991

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Figure 1.2: Louise Bourgeois, Passage Dangereux, 1997

Figure 1.3: Louise Bourgeois, Passage Dangereux (detail), 1997

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Bibliography:

Bourgeois, Louise, Marie-Laure Bernadac, and Hans Ulrich. Obrist.Destruction of the Father Reconstruction of the Father: Writings and Interviews, 1923-1997. Cambridge, MA: MIT in Association with Violette Editions, London, 1998. Print.

Bourgeois, Louise, and Julienne Lorz. Louise Bourgeois: Structures of Existence: The Cells. Munich: Haus Der Kunst, n.d. Print.

Louise Bourgeois. Structures of Existence: The Cells." Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. September 25, 2015. Accessed April 25, 2016. http://garagemca.org/en/event/louise-bourgeois-structures-of-existence-the-cells.

Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress and the Tangerine. Dir. Marion Cajori and Amei Wallach. Perf. Louise Bourgeois. Zeitgeist Films, 2008. Web.

Cox, Ann. LB: Louise Bourgeois. London: Tate, 2010. Print. Fink, Bruce. A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and

Technique. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1997. Print. Lacan, Jacques. Ecrits. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002. Print. Potts, Alex. “Louise Bourgeois: Sculptural Confrontations”. Oxford Art Journal 22.2

(1999): 39–53. Web.

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