Louise Bourgeois

(Go watch my Youtube video essay on her and her work at "Shannon Kim" if you're interested!!!!!!!)   

 Louise Bourgeois exemplified how art can serve as a means to process internal emotions and psychological landscapes, as demonstrated through her life. She explored a wide range of artistic mediums such as painting, drawing, and sculpture, using them to dissect, examine, and respond to the traumatic experiences from her childhood, including her father's infidelity. Bourgeois' artworks often delved into brooding and sexually explicit themes, presenting the female perspective on topics like suppression, feminism, and sensuality. Additionally, her unique emphasis on three-dimensional forms was uncommon for women artists during her time. Bourgeois' unwavering commitment to self-expression, both as an artist and a mentor to emerging talents, granted her immense international significance. This influence is most evident in her contributions to the advancement of conceptual and Installation Art.

She is most evidently known for her beloved sculpture, Maman. Standing over thirty feet high of wire metals and intricate sculpting, it is an explicate gift of gratuity and motif for her mother.

Bourgeois' work helped inform the burgeoning feminist art movement and continues to influence feminist-inspired work and Installation Art. She explored a variety of themes over the course of her long career including domesticity and the family, sexuality and the body, as well as death and the subconscious. These themes connect to events from her childhood which she considered to be a therapeutic process. Birthing the wave of confessional art, she was able to encourage an intimate analysis of the artist's, artist's subjects, or spectator's confidential, and often controversial, experiences and emotions.