Double Sexus: Hans Bellmer and Louise Bourgeois

For immediate release: March 22, 2011

EUROPEAN EXHIBITION MAKES U.S. DEBUT AT WEXNER CENTER

Columbus, OH—Double Sexus: Hans Bellmer and Louise Bourgeois, an exhibition that explores the connections and distinctions between these two influential and historically significant artists, will make its U.S. debut at the Wexner Center for the Arts. On view March 26–July 31, 2011, the show features the provocative, sexually charged work of Hans Bellmer (1902–1975)—a German artist known for his drawings, photographs, and sculptures—and Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010), the famed French-born sculptor known for her psychological investigations of the human form. Bourgeois was the recipient of the Wexner Prize in 1999. She passed away last year at the age of 98.

Wexner Center Director Sherri Geldin notes, “Having first seen Double Sexus in Berlin last year, I was struck by both its concept and installation—a brilliant selection and juxtaposition of work by Louise Bourgeois and Hans Bellmer, illustrating the remarkable affinities between them. The exhibition reveals truly uncanny parallels in their exploration and manipulation of the human body to challenge entrenched social conventions, often by embracing imagery and ideas once considered taboo. Though we’ve shown a handful of sculptures by Bourgeois over the years, here was an opportunity to provide our audiences with a richer, more in-depth experience of her work while also introducing them to a somewhat lesser known artist peer.”

Though Bellmer and Bourgeois were both expatriates who associated with surrealists in the 1930s, the two never met (Bellmer was a German émigré to France, Bourgeois a French émigré to the U.S.). Despite this, their work shares many striking formal and thematic similarities. Taking its name from Henry Miller’s novel Sexus, the exhibition highlights both artists’ investigations of sexuality, desire, gender, and the body, exploring fantasies and fears, the ambiguity of sex organs, and the links between eroticism and creativity. This exhibition, which marks the first dialogue between their work, features more than 50 works in sculpture, photography, and works on paper, with pieces as early as 1934 and as recent as 2008.

This exhibition is recommended for mature audiences.

The show is divided into five sections, with the work of the two artists juxtaposed throughout:

• Dolls and Protheses includes one of Bellmer’s manipulated, dismembered, and reconstituted dolls, as well as photographs of these doll-like forms in various scenarios. Bourgeois’s disembodied fabric forms and bronze sculptures like Henriette (1985), which function as a commentary on archetypal gender roles, will be also be on view. For both artists, dolls and prostheses signal vulnerability and helplessness while also operating as symbols of healing and regained autonomy.


• Doubling and Pairing explores the act of creation—single-sex duplication and different-sex procreation—an idea present in nearly all of Bellmer’s works and a significant number by Bourgeois. Additionally, both artists deal with the concept of sexual hybridity in hermaphrodites or androgynous figures through which they examine the mingling of male and female characteristics such as genitalia.


• forme/informe surveys the artists applications of the idea of the “formless” (the shapeless, illogical, worthless, meaningless) which has come to be a significant concept in understanding 20th-century art. The deliberately ambiguous forms created by Bellmer and Bourgeois also evoke a variety of bodily associations.


• Diana of Ephesus takes the Greco-Roman goddess Artemis or Diana often associated with fertility, virginity and the hunt as an important source of inspiration for both artists. Works such as Bellmer’s La Toupie (The Top) (1965/68) or Bourgeois’s Nature Study (1984/2001) draw on a specific version of the goddess that emphasizes her role as a symbol of fertility by depicting her with multiple breasts.


• Histoire de l'oeil (Story of the Eye) takes its name from the famed 1928 erotic novella by Georges Bataille which used the relationship between sexual acts and the idea of a penetrating gaze as its central metaphor. Bellmer illustrated a new edition of the novel with explicit photographs, etchings, and drawings depicting the sexual exploration of the body. These are paired with very late works by Bourgeois that also explore the metaphoric connections of penetration in sex and sight.

Double Sexus was organized by Udo Kittelmann, Silke Krohn, and Kyllikki Zacharias at the Nationalgalerie, Berlin, in cooperation with the Wexner Center. It was on view in Berlin in spring and summer 2010, and at Gemeentemuseum in The Hague in fall 2010 through early 2011.

The artists

Hans Bellmer is considered among the leading surrealists of the 1930s. He arrived in Berlin in 1922 to study engineering, and soon began to explore his affinity for drawing and became acquainted with such artists as George Grosz, John Heartfield, and Rudolf Schlichter. By 1924, he abandoned engineering altogether and became an illustrator and commercial artist. Giving up commercial art in protest against the rising Nazi regime, Bellmer began to construct and dismantle doll-like figures as part of his artistic practice. Enthusiastic about his work, the Paris surrealists published the images in the surrealist journal Minotaure in 1934. After 1935, Bellmer consistently appeared in exhibitions with other artists in the surrealist circle. In 1938 he left Germany under pressure from the Nazis and emigrated to Paris. He spent the remainder of his life in France and continued to garner acclaim for his photographs, drawings, prints, and sculptures, particularly in the last 20 years of his life.

Louise Bourgeois is considered to be one of the most bold and challenging female artists of the 20th century. After studying mathematics at the Sorbonne, she began creating artwork and in 1938 trained in the studio of Fernand Léger. That same year, she married Robert Goldwater, an American art historian, curator, and critic, and emigrated to New York. During her early years in New York, Bourgeois worked with surrealist expatriates, including Joan Miró and André Masson. By the 1960s, her work had become much more sexually charged and explicit. In the 1970s, in the wake of the feminist movement, her art began to garner significant attention and acclaim. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, organized her first retrospective in 1982 (and the first solo show for a female artist at that institution).

During the last decades of her life, Bourgeois was consistently hailed as one of the most important and influential living artists. Her influence continues to be felt by many younger artists, especially women, as can be seen in the exhibitions of work by both Nathalie Djurberg and Pipilotti Rist, on view at the Wexner Center concurrently with Double Sexus.

Catalogue and related event

A fully illustrated catalogue accompanies this touring exhibition and is available in the Wexner Center Store.

The Wexner Center’s Lambert Family Lecture, "Remembering Louise," will feature Jerry Gorovoy, longtime assistant, collaborator and friend; and Germano Celant, former curator of contemporary art at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, which organized Bourgeois’s final exhibition before she passed away in May 2010. The event will be held Tuesday, April 26 at 7 pm in the Wexner Center’s Film/Video Theater, and admission is free. The event will be streamed live at wexarts.org/live.

Ohio State faculty members Sandra Macpherson (English) and Shannon Winnubst (Women's Studies) will share and trade insights on the exhibition in a talk, "Double Take: Double Sexus" on Wednesday, April 13 at 12:30 pm.

The Spring Exhibitions Opening Celebration will be held Friday, March 25 (member preview 6–7 pm, general public 7–9 pm).

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EXHIBITION ORGANIZATION AND SUPPORT

Double Sexus was organized by Udo Kittelmann, Silke Krohn, and Kyllikki Zacharias at the Nationalgalerie, Berlin in cooperation with the Wexner Center.

Generous support for the Wexner Center's presentation of Double Sexus is provided by Agnes Gund and Dorothy Lichtenstein.

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