Fantastic Reality: Louise Bourgeois and a Story of Modern Art (review)

Fantastic Reality is the detailed story of Louise Bourgeois's fascinating career and life. Mignon Nixon has done an excellent job of producing not only a detailed, exceptionally well-researched scholarly work, but at the same time, a personable story that is a fairly easy read. Bourgeois's story is intimately linked with many other artists and, as the title suggests, with modern art. This work discusses Bourgeois's relationship with both modern art and some of its more famous characters, such as Duchamp, Miró and Giacometti.

The four main factors in Bourgeois's life—-motherhood, psychoanalysis, surrealism and feminism—-are woven together in an effort to understand this enigmatic artist. While Nixon's analysis goes a long way toward helping us in this understanding, we are still left with a slight knowing smile, which acknowledges Bourgeois's remarkable talent for playing games.

The surrealists took game playing seriously; so too does Bourgeois. She does this convincingly, because she is well grounded in ordinary reality. Apart from being a sculptor dealing with messy, earthy materials, she also raised three sons and early in her career battled against the patriarchal status quo, including rejection by certain surrealists, especially André Breton. This, together with her innate understanding of psychoanalytical theory, allowed her to create her own fantastic reality. "It is here in this shadow world of psychoanalysis that Bourgeois's work is theoretically founded" (p. 268).

The book is written from a psychoanalytical perspective generally and discusses Freudian and Kleinian theory specifically. Even if the reader has problems with psychoanalysis as a "way of knowing" the world, as I do, Fantastic Reality will still prove to be a satisfying read, not only because of its detailed historical account, but also because Nixon has written the book with Bourgeois, not only about her. I think this is a very important point to consider, as far too many books are written about artists, especially with a psychoanalytical take, without the author having ever met or interviewed the artist.

Fantastic Reality has numerous illustrations, including personal photographs of Bourgeois herself, together with her drawings and sculptures. All are in black and white. There are six chapters, together with an epilogue and good index.

Bourgeois's career was clearly influenced by the resistance to women's art that she experienced in her formative artistic years. This, combined with her surrealist associations, developed into a driving force in both her life and her art that could be termed "psychoanalytical feminism": "Bourgeois's art was self-consciously and intimately linked with the history of psychoanalysis" (p. 50). It is well known that the early evolution of the surrealist movement was coterminous with the development of Freudian psychoanalysis. "Through burlesque and parody she has embodied feminist resistance to phallocentrism, to the objectification of the female body as sex object, to conventional gender roles, and to the patriarchal arrangements of the avant-garde" (p. 82).

While Bourgeois's feminism embraces many of the traditional feminist ideals, she is a somewhat idiosyncratic feminist. Rather than engaging in academic-style discourse, she plays and plays hard. Much of her work, especially sculpture, takes patriarchal and phallocentric symbols and turns them back on themselves in an attempt to disempower them. One such work Fillette, a sculpture of male genitalia in latex over plaster, is presented numerous times in photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe. Bourgeois poses with the sculpture under her arm, and in her arms as a baby. I found the psychoanalytical interpretation of this work and performance (pp. 71-82) in Chapter 2, "What's So Funny about Fetishism?" to push the interpretation to the point of incredulity. Also the work lacks subtlety and is really a bit of a yawn! This is not a criticism of the book per se, more of Bourgeois's art and of psychoanalysis itself.

This is a fascinating book about a fascinating artist...