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Course: Modernisms 1900-1980 > Unit 13
Lesson 1: Sculpture- Melvin Edwards, Some Bright Morning
- Hesse, Untitled
- Hesse, Untitled (Rope Piece)
- The last work of Eva Hesse
- Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party
- Louise Bourgeois, Cumul I
- Barbara Zucker, Mix, Stir, Pour (White Floor Piece)
- Barbara Zucker, Time Signatures: Homage to Linda and Lucy. My Luminaries
- Winsor, #1 Rope
- Mario Merz, Giap’s Igloo
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Louise Bourgeois, Cumul I
The Reality of Three-Dimensional Form
Bulbous mounds, and spherical or oval growths emerge, conflate and disturb. Cumul I is a marble sculpture, part of a series, by the late French-born artist, Louise Bourgeois. Cumul, as in, cumulus, is a reference to the forms of rounded clouds. The motif was first developed in drawings but Bourgeois wanted the reality of three-dimensional form, as she thought she could express deeper things in sculpture.
Like so much of Bourgeois' work, Cumul I is loaded with entangled metaphors of male and female body parts that are simultaneously abstract and descriptive. Her career breezed over so many significant trends of the 20th century that her work defies identification within any single art movement. Instead, there is an uncompromising personal symbolism throughout her oeuvre (life's work), filled with certain recurring motifs such as vessels, containers, ovoids, body parts, and spiders (a metaphor of her mother's work as a weaver).
Appealing and Disturbing
The sculpture, Cumul I, is designed to sit on the floor and be viewed from above. Its forms still shock nearly half a century after its completion. The artist denied any reference to sexual forms in this work, but the association is undeniable. The viewer is confronted with a cluster of mounds that resemble breasts and penises emerging from a rippling fabric. So what then was Bourgeois trying to communicate in this beautifully sculpted marble? What can be understood from a sculpture that is aesthetically appealing and at the same time disturbing?
Bourgeois offered some explanation to her mysterious oeuvre and implied that the Freudian concept of a traumatized childhood was the catalyst for her artistic motives. The artist has confirmed that all of her work found inspiration in her childhood. Scholars have noted that the childhood traumas of having a sick mother and egocentric philandering father who had an affair with her nanny, had a powerful impact on the young Bourgeois who later stated, "My childhood has never lost its magic, it has never lost its mystery, and it has never lost its drama."* References to Bourgeois' family, and sexuality, developed over the span of her career into a personal artistic vocabulary.
Making Sense of Cumul I
When we try to make sense of the male and female forms that reveal and conceal themselves simultaneously in Cumul I, it can help to remember Bourgeois’ childhood. Ambiguity and overlapping gender are characteristics found in many of Bourgeois’ sculptures and installations. Her art is deeply personal, confusing, troubling, magical and quite wonderful. She was one of the most significant women artists of the twentieth century.
Essay by Karen Schifman
* Louise Bourgeois: Destruction of the Father Reconstruction of the Father, Writings and Interviews 1923-1997, edited and with texts by Marie Laure-Bernadac and Hans-Ulrich Obrist, MIT Press, 1998, page 277. The quote is also found in a compilation of Bourgeois' images juxtaposed by text entitled "Album" 1994 and published by Peter Blum.
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Want to join the conversation?
- This piece is intriguing and beautiful but the opinion that this is 'undeniably' breasts and penises is surely not the collective and sole opinion of the art world? Are there any other unique takes on this?(4 votes)
- The analysis is based on the author's understanding not only of this particular work but of the artist's entire career as well as the artist's statements.(5 votes)
- Truthfully, I see eyes or approximations of eyes. Not all of them human. Like the idealized perfect roundness of a young artist trying to capture the shape of an eye for the first time. Or the bubbling, watching gaze of an arachnid. I get the sense of surprised rapture in having made a perfect form in a new material. Part of the beauty in this piece is in how many ways it can be perceived. Is anyone else getting that?(5 votes)
- I honest and truly do not see either of those. Why exactly did they say it was "undeniable?"(3 votes)
- Is a traumatic childhood a common theme among artists? Would that make their art some form of therapy perhaps?(2 votes)
- Whether something is or could be considered therapeutic, for example art, music, craft work, conversation, etc. may well depend on the intention behind the act, the actor, and the acted-upon.(1 vote)