last saturday (I): the louises

My trip to Europe was short--less than a week--but blessed with some extraordinary moments. Whenever I get the chance to fly across the Atlantic for work, I try to organize a stopover in London/Oxford afterwards, but the last time I'd managed to do so was in February. This may have been my shortest visit, but it was also one of the best.

On Saturday morning I got up very early and headed to the Budapest airport for a flight to Heathrow (o, most familiar of airports!) Instead of getting straight onto the Oxford bus, though, I boarded the Piccadilly line and rode into Central London, because just before leaving, I'd learned that my visit would coincide with the Louise Bourgeois retrospective at the Tate Modern. Perfect timing: it was in fact at the Tate where I'd first been introduced to her work, through the massive spider sculpture 'Maman' that stood guard over the Turbine Hall (it's back, for the retrospective, but now outside on the bank near the Millennium Bridge, eyeing the dome of St Paul's across the Thames). I loved that piece (which has inspired its own flickr pool!), and was intrigued by the other fragments of her work I'd seen--as well as by a striking essay about an encounter with her that the blogger formerly known as Teju Cole (or is it the Teju Cole formerly known as a blogger?) once wrote.


So I dragged my little suitcase all the way to the museum (thankfully, the coatroom checkers are accomodating sorts). On my way in I got to see Doris Salcedo's "Shibboleth", as well--also known as "the crack in the floor!"--which was fun indeed, and was provoking a rare degree of delight and interaction from its audience. (The preschool set were especially engaged, but so were those old enough to be their grandparents).

And then Louise: oh my. This was one of the more intense and intensive shows I've seen, and I enjoyed it tremendously, despite being crowded by lots of elbow-wielding French tourists. No way to do justice to it here, but the pieces that struck me most were some of the sculptures dating from her turn to working with more traditional, solid materials (marble, metal), which were sited in one of the brilliant galleries with vertical-split windows looking out to the river; the massive 'room' installations and the spiders; and a range of small and vivid prints and drawings (especially those on the femme-maison theme) from throughout her career. She left me thinking of another Louise, whose work I also tend to read as profoundly feminist, and yet thoroughly unpredictable in its conclusions: the poet Louise Glück. In "October," the cornerstone of her collection Averno (which has been company all through this summer and autumn), she writes

It is true there is not enough beauty in the world.
It is also true that I am not competent to restore it.
Neither is there candor, and here I may be of some use.

It seems like the kind of thing the other Louise would say, as well--and but I think these two women are more then competent to provide both.

Afterwards, I was utterly worn out, and had to forgo the temptations of the permanent collection to make my way to Victoria station and onto the bus, where I fell asleep and dreamed of strange, fluid forms.