Louise Bourgeois was a brilliant sculptor. I first became acquainted and fascinated with her work when I saw one of her titanic spider sculptures at the Tate Modern in London many years ago. She intermingled aspects of her personal story (and that of her family) quite closely in her art.
Over this past weekend in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, I read Louise Bourgeois’ quite wonderful, insightful, and funny collection of writings and interviews, “Destruction of the Father/Reconstruction of the Father” (MIT Press 1998). In that book I came across the following passage from her 1990 MacDowell Medal Acceptance Speech, which did get my attention: