Louise Bourgeois y sus Femme-Maison

Abstract

When Louise Bourgeois travels to New York in 1938, she comes across with a flourishing artistic movement but with which she will not feel identified. The true current with which the artist identifies herself is the psychoanalysis that she uses as personal therapy along with her works. Her personal traumas will make her work something totally innovative for the time, highlighting above all the Femme-maison and The Cells, claustrophobic spaces in which the viewer can experience that sensation of oppression by entering them. This feeling of being confined within a space we will find very early in her work. In the first Femme-maison, the French artist runs into this world in the critical way, reflecting with it women the relationship with the domestic space. Hence, feminist currents at the time welcome these work of art as a model and reflection of the repression that women live in patriarchal society. Although this is one of the plausible interpretations, it is not the only one. When we talk about of Louise Bourgeois we can´t ignore her biography, because all of it is represented in her artistic works. Her childhood will be a constant reference in each of her work as well, as the relationship with an authoritarian father whom she loved as much as she hated. This love-hate bond is expressed with true sadism in one of her most famous works, The Destruction of the Father, with which she goes back into that private space of the house.