Sometimes there is a good reason to be mad at oneself, at the world, at the universe and everything in between, and right now I’m mad because Louise Bourgeois died on May 31 and I only found out a couple of days from a single link from Feministing. I’m mad at myself because I don’t follow the art world close enough or the news close enough, so I’m finally registering for artforum online so when a favorite artist of mine dies, I might find out about it sooner, and you know, keep up on art shit. I’m mad at the universe for no reason because Bourgeois did live to a long full life as tough as it was for her, but anger isn’t always rational.
I’m mad at the world because why in the world did I not hear about this till now? Why wasn’t there more news on this? A fucking article on MSN news? Or yahoo news? Or wherever the hell I get my news at whenever I open up my browsers. I know I was busy that week she died, but I was on the internet. Hell, not even the feminist blogs touched on her death, except for Feministing linking to a video two weeks after the fact. I know that people are dying every day, I know that there’s a major disaster in the Gulf of Mexico killing a whole bunch of critters, but shit, Bourgeois is relevant damnit! Only the most sexist of art historians or critics, or people totally ignorant about art history or contemporary art (which unfortunately a lot of people are) wouldn’t think that Bourgeois wasn’t a major player in art. So where are the discussions about how awesome she is? Where are the sad tributes to her death? Where is the talk about how influential she was to the art world in the last half of the century? We can talk forever and a day on the tragedy that was the death of Heath Ledger, but not even a note about a major artist of this and the previous century?(Except almost exclusively on art news sites, and fuck Charlie Finch and what he wrote about Bourgeois when she died). Sure people can talk crap about contemporary art about how you can wipe dog shit on a canvas and sell it in a major gallery for thousands of dollars on one hand, and on the other hand talk about the sexism toward women artists in the art world, but nothing’s ever going to change when we can’t even recognize a powerhouse like Bourgeois.
Shameful as it is, I’ve only known about Bourgeois for a couple of years back when I was taking contemporary art from Elaine O’Brien at Sac State. Dumb kid as I was, I didn’t really have a favorite artist. I knew I was supposed to like Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, because they are the awesome of awesome artists and they painted and sculpted so realistically, and omg there are no artists as great as they are these days because no one can paint realistically these days dontchaknow? And everybody, and I mean everyone loves Salvador Dali, it’s like a rule or something that everyone has to love Dali, or Picasso, unless you hate Picasso, then you have to love Dali. But me? Well I don’t really hate artists, other than maybe Francois Boucher(his Leda and the Swan + Rococo sux = barf), and maybe Dali but only because everyone loves him so much, but like I said I didn’t have any favorites. Then I found out a few female artists such as Alice Aycock, Judy Chicago, and Louise Bourgeois, Marina Abramovic, Yoko Ono, and my eyes were opened to many artistic possibilities.
I can say so much about Bourgeois. I’m not crazy about everything she made (I’m not crazy about every song on my favorite bands either, go figure) but she made hella much work, and made plenty of fantastic pieces. And far from being meek, her artwork was often aggressive, powerful, and scary but can be funny and witty. I loved her personality since I read her Fillette quote, I don’t even remember what it was exactly but it was something about how she had to protect it because that part of the male anatomy is so fragile or something like that. My love for her personality was confirmed when I saw her part in an episode of Art:21, and the documentary about her called Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress, and the Tangerine. I’ve never met her, and maybe if she’d seen my artwork (my sculpture artwork, not my digital artwork) she might have thrashed it, but I’m still inspired by her and wish I could have met her, but she’s gone now.
So goodbye Louise Bourgeois, the art world will miss your greatness.
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