# @drawingcenter on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/Bb4fQH_hRva
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/16046333-drawingcenter-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/thumbnails/d46772aa8a.jpg
- **Posted:** 2017-11-24T15:14:26.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** The Drawing Center (@drawingcenter) — https://gondola.cc/drawingcenter

## Caption

Artists have a variety of methods to make their mark. Every Friday we will share a photograph of an #ArtistInAction. 〰
Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) was a prolific French-American sculptor famous for her biomorphic forms that are poignant expressions of her interior life. Bourgeois was originally interested in mathematics and found comfort in the fields direct answers until she found that it does not offer the certainty she was hoping for. "You're told that two parallels never meet,” she explains “and then you learn that in non-Euclidean geometry they can easily come together. I was deeply disappointed, and turned toward the certainties of feeling." Bourgeois’ sculptures are deeply personal and embody a powerful emotionality, which is sometimes accounted to her difficult childhood. Most well-known are her spider structures that she said represents her mother. The largest, entitled “Maman” (translates to mother), is thirty feet in height and made out of steel and marble. “Maman” looms above visitors in both a threatening and protective way, perhaps reflective of Bourgeois’ own mother-daughter relationship. 〰
The formal qualities of her work are partly influenced by her mathematical background, but her sculptures often take on a sexual and bodily quality, too. Her deformed and provocative figural shapes might be what we imagine the body to look like if it could express complex emotions through its physical form. “The subject of pain is the business I am in,” she said. “To give meaning and shape to frustration and suffering.” Bourgeois’ prolific career took off when MoMA presented a large survey of her work, the first retrospective they dedicated to a woman artist. Now MoMA is hosting another Bourgeois exhibition featuring her prints, on view through January 28, 2018. 
#Louisebourgeois
Photo: Helmut Lang, 1997

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## Tags

artistinaction, louisebourgeois

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