The Woven Child
Artist
Louise Bourgeois
(American, born in France, 1911–2010)
Date2002
Mediumfabric in a stainless steel, glass, and wood vitrine
Dimensionsobject: 73.6 cm (29 in.)
mounted: 177.8 × 88.9 × 53.3 cm (70 × 35 × 21 in.)
mounted: 177.8 × 88.9 × 53.3 cm (70 × 35 × 21 in.)
ClassificationsSculpture
Credit LineStoddard Acquisition Fund
Object number2005.284
DescriptionMetal and glass vitrine, with wood floor.Label TextAlthough rooted in her lived experiences as daughter, wife, and mother, the content of Louise Bourgeois’ art is primarily archetypal and explores the psychological and emotional effects of human relations. In the final decade of a 70-year career, she turned to an unconventional material not typically used for sculpture—fabric—which brought her back to her original aesthetic impulse, working with textiles (as a child she worked at her mother’s side in the family business in France restoring tapestries). In The Woven Child, a radical reinterpretation of a subject found throughout the history of art—mother and child—Bourgeois engages in dialectics of self and other, estrangement and intimacy, awkwardness and tenderness, inadequacy and promise. In contrast to the pristine wholeness of the child, the incomplete adult is crudely stitched from scraps of garments and linens from Bourgeois’ past (complete with occasional stain and defect) and bares the marks of age and experience. While a glass vitrine both protects and imprisons this vulnerable pair, the womb-like and finely woven blue netting around the child provides a more amorphous enclosure as well as an added layer of separation. Another touch of blue exposed at the mother’s neck alerts us to the fragile yet lasting link between these individual bodies. ProvenanceThe artist; Cheim & Read, New York, NY
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