louise bourgeois
Art world grande dame
The French-american artist Louise Bourgeois may have been 96 years old when she joined Rei Kawakubo and Zaha Hadid as our joint Guest Editor in October 2008, but she took on the role with the energy of someone half her age. Bourgeois worked with three long-time friends and collaborators – fashion designer turned artist Helmut Lang, architect Peter Zumthor and artist Roni Horn – to curate a unique edit of their work.
Paris-born Bourgeois moved to New York in 1938 and achieved international recognition for the disturbing sculptures and installations that she began producing in the 1960s. She was exploring familiar territory when she told us, ‘I say things that I shouldn’t say and I do things that I shouldn’t do. There is violence. I break things and then there is guilt and regret. The duality is in the work.’
Her final major work, a collaboration with Zumthor, was the Steilneset Memorial at Vardø in Norway. Previewed in our 2008 issue, it opened in 2011, a year after she died, and the intense psychodrama of its interior – dedicated to the many women burnt as witches hereabouts in the early 17th century – doubles as a fitting memorial to Bourgeois herself.