Cell (Glass Spheres and Hands)
"Cell (Glass Spheres and Hands)" is one of several freestanding sculptural installations by Louise Bourgeois. The title "Cell" can refer to the most basic building block of a living organism or a prison. Bourgeois' Cells combine aspects of both definitions, pairing the organic with the correctional. Matching used perfume bottles, vanity mirrors, model homes, and excised limbs with steel fencing, broken furniture, a guillotine, and a mechanical saw, each composition employs domestic and institutional elements to tell a story. In "Cell (Glass Spheres and Hands)," two fragmented marble arms rest on a fabric covered table. With hands clasped in a gesture of prayer, the isolated arms appear to be soft and vulnerable in spite of their rock-hard substance. Encircling the table are five glass spheres of different sizes, each resting on its own worn chair. Each enclosed sphere is like a bubble, self-contained but fragile in its existence. The chairs and spheres face the table in a united front, cornering and further isolating the hands. The work plays with relationships such as teacher/student and parent/child. In an arrangement that is reminiscent of a family gathering or classroom situation, "Cell (Glass Spheres and Hands)" invests inanimate objects with human qualities by enacting a drama in space. kelua.com
Cell II (1991)
The mirrored table could be a lady’s vanity where she would display her bottles of perfume. Shalimar could be the scent her mother wore throughout Bourgeois’ childhood. The mirror reflects the hands, contorted with distress, as are the stylized glass bottles, doubling the impact of both. The wooden doors connect together as though they have joined hands, confining the memories and emotions associated with the objects inside, unwilling to release.
The simple placement of an empty bottle can evoke so much. Jacques Guerlain created Shalimar in 1921 on the heels of the end of World War I, when Bourgeois would have been 7 years old. With notes of vanilla, bergamot, and iris, it is a perfume in the category of “Oriental” that was immensely popular at the time. Shalimar epitomized elegance, taste, and romance. It was the story of the Mughal emperor who built the Gardens of Shalimar for his great love in Lahore, and then the Taj Mahal, that inspired Guerlain to put forth this enduring classic.
A perfume, inspired by the story of ideal love, is used up, has dried away in Bourgeois’ sculpture. Yet the involuntary memory stirred upon smelling the perfume, much like Proust’s experience with tea and the madeleine, is irrepressible. This is the power of scent. All that is left are the tortured memories that do not wish to go away. madperfumista.com
“Structures of Existence” at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is the largest overview to date of Franco-American artist Louise Bourgeois’s “Cells” – a series of sculptural environments created over a period of two decades that deal with issues of memory, emotion, pain, anxiety, and abandonment.
Within each of the architectural “Cell” enclosures, Bourgeois composed found objects, garments, furniture, and sculptures into emotionally charged theatrical sets, establishing a barrier between the interior world of the artist and the exterior world of the exhibition space. blouinartinfo.com
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