Marie-Laure Bernadac, Curator
SPECIAL REPORT - 96-year old Louise Bourgeois, born in Paris and living in New York since 1938, has traveled down the history of modern art while remaining irreducible to aesthetical categorizations. The exhibit at the Centre Pompidou (running until June 2), first held at Tate Modern and afterwards travelling to New York, Los Angeles and Washington DC, is the largest retrospective ever dedicated to the artist in France. It conveys the breadth and complexity of her work, the stunningly wide gamut of media and themes (the feminine, childhood, sexuality, memory) Bourgeois explored, obsessively busy mending what has been damaged, fighting anguish and warding off absences. An in-depth interview of co-curator Marie-Laure Bernadac offers us an overview of Bourgeois’s career, from her first sculptures in the 40s to the monumental installations of the 80s and 90s. She explains how the show focuses on the artist's "late style" with her most recent works on paper. The report is accompanied by Louise Bourgeois's songs from Le murmure de l'eau qui chante and some enlightening quotations of her texts.
Louise Bourgeois Retrospective, March 05 - June 02 2008, Paris, France
Centre Pompidou, Paris, France