16 etchings with watercolour, gouache, graphite, coloured pencil and ink on paper
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
ARTIST ROOMS
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/louise-bourgeois-2351" aria-label="More by Louise Bourgeois" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Louise Bourgeois</a>
À LInfini
ARTIST ROOMS 
Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. Lent by Artist Rooms Foundation 2013
<p>The title of this large scale, multi-part drawing translates as ‘into infinity’ or ‘ad infinitum’. Each sheet contains the image of ribbons that weave around each other and flow diagonally across the page. Suggestive of blood-filled arteries, umbilical cords, rivers, threads or tubes, the drawings remind us of the basic elements of life and its complex journey through time.</p><p><em>Gallery label, October 2016</em></p>
paper unique 16 etchings watercolour gouache graphite coloured pencil ink
26 October 2013 – 18 May 2014
2014-05-18
26 October 2013 – 18 May 2014
2014-05-18
2013-10-26
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Edinburgh, UK)
http://www.nationalgalleries.org/
2013-10-26
ARTIST ROOMS Louise Bourgeois
Collection based display
18 July 2014 – 12 October 2014
2014-10-12
18 July 2014 – 12 October 2014
2014-10-12
2014-07-18
Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (Middlesbrough, UK)
http://www.visitmima.com/
2014-07-18
ARTIST ROOMS 2014: Louise Bourgeois
Loan-out
16 January 2015 – 19 April 2015
2015-04-19
16 January 2015 – 19 April 2015
2015-04-19
2015-01-16
Southampton City Art Gallery (Southampton, UK)
http://www.southampton.gov.uk/leisure/arts
2015-01-16
ARTIST ROOMS 2015: Louise Bourgeois
Loan-out
10 June 2016 – 18 June 2017
2017-06-18
10 June 2016 – 18 June 2017
2017-06-18
2016-06-10
Tate Modern (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/
2016-06-10
ARTIST ROOMS Louise Bourgeois
Collection based display
22 January 2019 – 24 March 2019
2019-03-24
22 January 2019 – 31 March 2019
2019-03-31
2019-01-22
Kettle’s Yard (Cambridge, UK)
http://www.kettlesyard.co.uk/
2019-01-22
ARTIST ROOMS 2019: Louise Bourgeois
Loan-out
23 July 2022 – 6 October 2024
2024-10-06
6 July 2024 – 6 October 2024
2024-10-06
2024-07-06
Compton Verney (Compton Verney, UK)
2022-07-23
Louise Bourgeois
Loan-out
25 November 2023 – 28 April 2024
2024-04-28
25 November 2023 – 28 April 2024
2024-04-28
2023-11-25
Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia)
http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au
2023-11-25
Louise Bourgeois
Loan-out
À L’Infini
image, each: 1016 × 1524 mm
frame, each: 1190 × 1698 × 70 mm
<a href="/search?gid=999999788" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">ARTIST ROOMS</a> 
Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. Lent by Artist Rooms Foundation 2013
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<p>
<i>À L’Infini </i>is a series of sixteen large works on paper, framed and arranged in grid. Each sheet has the same printed image of two intersecting tube-like lines as a base, which Bourgeois added to with pencil and gouache washes. On some sheets there are traces of words written in pencil. On other sheets there are depictions of the female body, couples, childbirth, disembodied limbs and body parts, among other elements like coils, spirals, tubes and flower buds. These elements merge and intersect with the spiralling lines snaking across the paper on a diagonal. The lines and shapes are coloured various shades of red, pink and white. It was completed between 2008 and 2009 when the artist was 97 years of age, with the assistance of her longtime assistant, friend and collaborator Jerry Gorovoy. Curator Lucy Askew has argued that this work reflects the themes and concerns that the artist explored throughout her long career (Askew and d’Offay 2013, p.36).</p>
<p>The French title of the work, ‘À L’Infini’, translated as ‘into infinity’, is suggestive of both an unmapped expanse and a life cycle. This idea is borne out by the evocation of bodily forms across the series, which range from full figures to body parts as well as more abstract shapes and textures evocative of internal organs. The diagonal lines crossing each sheet are reminiscent of veins or arteries and splotches of red and pink paint could be read as drips and splashes of blood. In this way the work might seem to suggest the fallibility of the body, with the infinity of the title referring to an experience after death. On the other hand, it might imply the continuation of life through family and reproduction as well as the artist’s body of work. Askew has also read the spirals of <i>À L’Infini</i> as symbolic of veins, umbilical cords and even of the double helix structure of DNA, the substance of which life is made. She writes:</p>
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</p><blockquote>Bourgeois’s drawings in pencil and red paint expand and reconfigure the printed lines which recede against a dance of knots and spirals, blood-filled arteries and veins, umbilical cords, meandering rivers, threads and tubes, notations and indistinct texts, floating figures and bulbous, anatomical shapes.<br/>(Askew and d’Offay 2013, p.24.)</blockquote>
<p>The artist’s use of red in<i> À L’Infini</i> is characteristic of her work on paper. Bourgeois stated: ‘Red is an affirmation at any cost – regardless of the dangers in fighting – of contradiction, of aggression. It’s symbolic of the intensity of the emotions involved.’ (Quoted in Askew and d’Offay 2013, p.85.) The colour appeals to the motifs connecting the different sheets in the series, which look like veins and arteries in the body or the blood lines of a family.</p>
<p>The spiralling line is a symbol that features prominently in Bourgeois’s work, especially as a means to represent reproduction. In her sculpture <i>Nature Study</i> 1986 (Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/bourgeois-nature-study-al00228" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>AL00228</span></a>) a hand also appears from within a spiral to cradle a female figure, representing the cyclical nature of motherhood and childbirth. This same, cyclical relationship is apparent in <i>À L’Infini, </i>with its depictions of the female figure hanging in space, a male and female couple embracing and infant figures suspended in womb-like sacks. Despite representing different stages in a life cycle, the work does not follow a straightforward narrative. Instead episodes cross over, intersect and are repeated and perspectives shift from bodies and limbs to microscopic shapes and textures. In this way <i>À L’Infini</i> combines the monumental with the everyday, presenting an intimate view in large scale.</p>
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<b>Further reading</b>
<br/>Paul Gardner, <i>Louise Bourgeois</i>, New York 1994.<br/>Mignon Nixon, <i>Fantastic Reality: Louise Bourgeois and a Story of Modern Art</i>, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London 2005.<br/>Lucy Askew and Anthony d’Offay, <i>Louise Bourgeois: A Woman without Secrets</i>, exhibition catalogue, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh 2013, pp.76–95, reproduced pp.28–9, 68–9, 77, 95.</p>
<p>Allan Madden<br/>The University of Edinburgh<br/>January 2015</p>
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<i>The University of Edinburgh is a research partner of ARTIST ROOMS.</i>
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Summary
2016-06-03T00:00:00
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SHORT_TEXT
<div class="text">
<p>The title of this large scale, multi-part drawing translates as ‘into infinity’ or ‘ad infinitum’. Each sheet contains the image of ribbons that weave around each other and flow diagonally across the page. Suggestive of blood-filled arteries, umbilical cords, rivers, threads or tubes, the drawings remind us of the basic elements of life and its complex journey through time.</p>
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2016-10-12T00:00:00
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