9 etching and drypoints on paper
Tate Collection
Works with images
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<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>
Ode à Ma Mère
Presented by the Tate Americas Foundation, courtesy of The Easton Foundation 2016
<p>Bourgeois’s suite of nine etchings titled <span>Ode à ma mère</span><span> </span>(‘Ode to my Mother’) explores her fascination with the spider (‘araignée’ in French). Each plate depicts a spider: some rendered in more detail than others. The spiders lurk in corners or on the ground, weave webs or attempt to climb. The last plate depicts a spider with two human faces attached to its small body at the top and the bottom, echoing Bourgeois’s earlier depictions of a mother giving birth. As the title suggests, the spider became linked in the artist’s mind with her own mother. The accompanying text – written in a mix of French and English and thereby indicating that the artist wrote it as a form of notemaking, self-analysis or thinking aloud – makes this explicit:</p>
paper print 9 etching drypoints
16 June 2014 – 12 April 2015
2015-04-12
16 June 2014 – 12 April 2015
2015-04-12
2014-06-16
Tate Modern (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/
2014-06-16
Louise Bourgeois Drawings
Collection based display
23 July 2022 – 6 October 2024
2024-10-06
23 July 2022 – 19 November 2022
2022-11-19
2022-07-23
Rugby Art Gallery and Museum (Rugby, UK)
18 March 2023 – 26 June 2023
2023-06-26
2023-03-18
Dorset Museum (Dorchester, UK)
8 July 2023 – 9 September 2023
2023-09-09
2023-07-08
Grundy Art Gallery (Blackpool, UK)
18 November 2023 – 11 February 2024
2024-02-11
2023-11-18
Burton Art Gallery and Museum (Bideford, UK)
2 March 2024 – 9 June 2024
2024-06-09
2024-03-02
Aberdeen Art Gallery (Aberdeen, UK)
http://www.aagm.co.uk
6 July 2024 – 6 October 2024
2024-10-06
2024-07-06
Compton Verney (Compton Verney, UK)
2022-07-23
Louise Bourgeois
Loan-out
23 July 2022 – 19 November 2022
2022-11-19
23 July 2022 – 20 November 2022
2022-11-20
2022-07-23
Rugby Art Gallery and Museum (Rugby, UK)
2022-07-23
ARTIST ROOMS 2022: Louise Bourgeois
Loan-out
Ode à Ma Mère
support, each: 300 × 300 mm each
frame: 372 × 369 × 37 mm each
Presented by the Tate Americas Foundation, courtesy of The Easton Foundation 2016
<div class="text">
<p>Bourgeois’s suite of nine etchings titled <i>Ode à ma mère</i><b> </b>(‘Ode to my Mother’) explores her fascination with the spider (‘araignée’ in French). Each plate depicts a spider: some rendered in more detail than others. The spiders lurk in corners or on the ground, weave webs or attempt to climb. The last plate depicts a spider with two human faces attached to its small body at the top and the bottom, echoing Bourgeois’s earlier depictions of a mother giving birth. As the title suggests, the spider became linked in the artist’s mind with her own mother. The accompanying text – written in a mix of French and English and thereby indicating that the artist wrote it as a form of notemaking, self-analysis or thinking aloud – makes this explicit:</p>
<p class="cttext">
</p><blockquote>
<i>The friend (l’araignée – pouquoi l’araignée?)</i>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<i>parce que my best friend was my mother and she</i>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<i>was deliberate, clever, patient, soothing, reasonable,</i>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<i>dainty, subtle, indispensable, neat and useful as an </i>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<i>araignee </i>…</blockquote>
<p>Louise Bourgeois first represented the spider in a drawing she made in 1947. In the 1990s the spider became a serious theme within her work, culminating in the large-scale bronze sculpture <i>Maman </i>1999 (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-maman-t12625" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>T12625</span></a>). Spiders are often referenced within myth, fairytales and nursery rhymes and are known for their slightly menacing characteristics. Yet for Bourgeois, there is always a connection with her own mother, who died when she was relatively young and who was a needlewoman involved in the family business of tapestry restoration and hence metonymically linked with the spinning and weaving, industrious spider. Bourgeois felt abandoned following her mother’s death and never fully came to terms with her loss. Her poem <i>Ode à ma mère</i> explores childhood memories and related anxieties, ending with the words:</p>
<p class="cttext">
</p><blockquote>
<i>Forgive me, maman, who lies, who lies, </i>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<i>I lie, I thought I knew, but I didn’t know maman. </i>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<i>Wait for me, don’t run, I’m coming. I need you</i>.</blockquote>
<p>
<i>Ode à ma mère</i><b> </b>was conceived for Editions du Solstice, Paris under the direction of Jean-Claude Meyer and sponsored by d’Ainery Langlois-Meurinne and Jean de Kervasdoue. The project was realised by Albert Dupont in collaboration with Jerry Gorovoy. The edition of ninety was printed in 1995 by Harlan &amp; Weaver Intaglio, New York, with thirty-five artist’s proofs of which this is the eighteenth. The box was made by l’Atelier Bernard Duval in Paris. All copies are signed and numbered.</p>
<p>Printmaking forms an important aspect of Louise Bourgeois’s practice. She first took up lithography at the Art Students League in New York in 1938. In the mid-1940s she practiced intaglio techniques at Stanley William Hayter’s (1901–1988) Atelier 17 print workshop in New York, preparing etching plates at home where she also had a small intaglio press. In the early days of her career she entered print competitions and exhibited at Print Club exhibitions. However, in the 1950s she stopped making prints until the 1970s when she taught courses in printmaking at New York’s School of Visual Arts. In the 1980s Bourgeois was approached by several publishers about print projects, including Benjamin Shiff, Peter Blum and Harlan and Weaver, all of whom Bourgeois collaborated with at various times during the next twenty years. In her introduction to the catalogue raisonné The Prints of Louise Bourgeois, published in 1994, Deborah Wye wrote:</p>
<p class="cttext">
</p><blockquote>Her attention is again focused on digging a line into metal and on the possibilities suggested by that act, and by the tools and materials needed to achieve it. The individual sheets made during the many stages of this process testify to the extraordinary creative adventure Bourgeois continues to pursue in this medium. Once again prints are an integral part of her repertoire of artistic mediums, again helping her to deal with memories, understand and control moods, alleviate anxiety, analyze a troubling situation, or even savour a joyous moment.<br/>(Deborah Wye, ‘Introduction’, in Wye and Smith 1994, p.32.)</blockquote>
<p>
<b>Further reading</b>
<br/>Deborah Wye and Carol Smith, The Prints of Louise Bourgeois, catalogue raisonné, The Museum of Modern Art, New York 1994, pp.72–97, 191–204.<br/>Louise Bourgeois – La Sage femme, 2007, exhibition catalogue, Espacio av EAV, Murcia, Spain 2007.</p>
<p>Ann Coxon<br/>May 2013</p>
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Summary
2024-01-15T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT