ELLYN WEISS


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Louise Bourgeois at the Hirshhorn

April 4, 2009

ImageImageI love obsessional, memory-haunted artists and Louise Bourgeois is in the first rank thereof. For 75 years she has mined the detritus of her childhood to make powerful, often frightening, sometimes horrifying art. The huge spiders are meant to evoke the spirit of her mother, a master weaver and tapestry maker whom she apparently saw as the protector against her father. The cells or rooms are enclosed installations that create worlds.

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parents' red room
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Child's red room
My favorites are the companion red rooms – one for the parents, one for the child. The parents’ room is orderly, buttoned-down and clean, but the blood red in which everything is rendered suggests barely suppressed emotion. The child’s room, also entirely blood red, is chockablock stuffed with objects of glass, fiber, a dog’s head, red glass hands; it is ominous, overwhelming, confusing and, to me, very scary. The thought of being confined in this room even for a night gives me the shakes.
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John Aaron molests the big spider
I visited the show with my friend, John Aaron, the amazing ceramic artist and all-around activist who founded and continues to be the heart of “Chalk 4 Peace”, which has now become an international child-centered art and political event. Check out his website at www.chalk4peace.com– this project really needs and deserves our support.
 

 
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© 2012 ELLYN WEISS