Louise Bourgeois
Untitled, 2001
Pink fabric and aluminium
36.2 x 29.8 x 29.8 cm
Untitled, 2001 is one of a series of seven unique heads, made from a pink material which was originally one of Louise Bourgeois’ jackets. Its fur and delicate red threads have an inviting softness in contrast to the stern features of the figure.
Bourgeois only worked with fabrics in the last 20 years of her life. In the mid 1990s, she asked her assistant to empty her cupboards and bring the contents to her studio. Sorting through the contents, she organised fabrics by colour and identified pieces which evoked memories of people and places from her past. She used these materials to create collages, ‘fabric drawings’, and sculptures. While the collages and drawings display abstract, repetitive patterns, the sculptures were modelled after figures and amorphous body parts.
Louise Bourgeois was one of the most important figures of modern and contemporary art. While best known for her large-scale sculptures and installations, she was also a painter and printmaker. In her multidisciplinary practice, she explored materiality, gender norms and her own personal life and psychology.
Bourgeois’ fabric sculptures sometimes combine aspects of male and female anatomies, different bodily parts or figures that incorporate elements like knives and houses to symbolise psychological attitudes and social norms. Among these themes, her use of fabrics references the tapestry workshops her parents owned in her childhood. Bourgeois described using clothing in her works as ‘an exercise of memory… it helps [her] explore the past’ (MOMA, 2017).