An extract from the non-fiction book: Predators, Survivors, Creativity where I look at the relationship between Tracey Emin and Louise Bourgeois.
”Louise Bourgeois was a French artist who spent much of her artistic working life in New York. Similarities can be drawn with Emin in terms of a difficult upbringing: her father was a tyrannical philanderer who had an affair with her Nanny and English teacher. Her mother died when Bourgeois was very young. Initial conception problems lead her to believe she was infertile, adopting her eldest son before her other boys were conceived. Bourgeois is known for feminist works such as ‘Fillette’ 1998-99 when she suspends a large plaster and latex form of male genitals.
‘Do not abandon Me’ was an exhibition of collaborative works by Bourgeois and Emin. First exhibited at the Carolina Nitsch Gallery in New York then at the Hauser & Wirth Gallery, Old Bond St, London 2011. The collaboration engaged with reoccurring themes in their creative practice: identity, sexuality, fear of loss and abandonment. Bourgeois painted male and female torso profiles on paper, these then went to Emin. She added fantasy drawings of figures and narrative to the images. The final pieces were printed to cloth by a New York firm. This was the last creative project which Bourgeois worked on before she died at the age of ninety-eight in 2010.”
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