Aziz Art January 2019

Aziz Art
January 2019
Abbas Kowsari
Parastou Forouhar
Louise Bourgeois

1-Louise Bourgeois
16-Parastou
Forouhar
21-Abbas Kowsari
Director: Aziz Anzabi
Editor : Nafiseh
Yaghoubi
Translator : Asra
Yaghoubi
Research: Zohreh Nazari
http://www.aziz-anzabi.com

Louise Joséphine Bourgeois 25
December 1911 – 31 May 2010
was a French-American artist.
Although she is best known for
her large-scale sculpture and
installation art, Bourgeois was also
a prolific painter and printmaker.
She explored a variety of themes
over the course of her long career
including domesticity and the
family, sexuality and the body, as
well as death and the
subconscious.
These themes connect to events
from her childhood which she
considered to be a therapeutic
process.
Although Bourgeois exhibited with
the Abstract Expressionists and her
work has much in common with
Surrealism and Feminist art, she
was not formally affiliated with a
particular artistic movement.
Early life
Bourgeois was born on 25
December 1911 in Paris, France.
She was the second child of three
born to parents
Joséphine Fauriaux and Louis
Bourgeois. She had an older sister
and a younger brother.Her parents
owned a gallery that dealt primarily
in antique tapestries. A few years
after her birth, her family moved
out of Paris and set up a workshop
for tapestry restoration below their
apartment in Choisy-le-Roi, for
which Bourgeois filled in the
designs where they had become
worn.
The lower part of the tapestries
were always damaged which was
usually the characters' feet and
animals' paws. Many of Bourgeois's
works have extremely fragile and
frail feet which could be a result of
the former.
In 1930, Bourgeois entered the
Sorbonne to study mathematics
and geometry, subjects that she
valued for their stability, saying "I
got peace of mind, only through
the study of rules nobody could
change."
Her mother died in 1932, while
Bourgeois was studying
mathematics. Her mother's death
inspired her to abandon
mathematics and to begin studying
art.
1

She continued to study art by
joining classes where translators
were needed for English-speaking
students, in which those
translators were not charged
tuition. In one such class Fernand
Léger saw her work and told her
she was a sculptor, not a painter.
Bourgeois graduated from the
Sorbonne 1935. She began
studying art in Paris, first at the
École des Beaux-Arts and
École du Louvre, and after 1932
in the independent academies
of Montparnasse and
Montmartre such as Académie
Colarossi, Académie Ranson,
Académie Julian, Académie de la
Grande Chaumière and with
André Lhote, Fernand Léger, Paul
Colin and Cassandre.
Bourgeois had a desire for firsthand
experience, and frequently
visited studios in Paris, learning
techniques from the artists and
assisting with exhibitions.
Bourgeois briefly opened a print
store beside her father's tapestry
workshop. Her father helped her
on the grounds that she had
entered into a commerce-driven
profession.
Bourgeois emigrated to New York
City in 1938. She studied at the Art
Students League of New York,
studying painting under Vaclav
Vytlacil, and also producing
sculptures and prints.
"The first painting had a grid: the
grid is a very peaceful thing
because nothing can go wrong ...
everything is complete. There is no
room for anxiety ... everything has
a place, everything is welcome."
Bourgeois incorporated those
autobiographical references to her
sculpture Quarantania I, on display
in the Cullen Sculpture Garden at
the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Middle years
For Bourgeois the early 1940s
represented the difficulties of a
transition to a new country and the
struggle to enter the exhibition
world of New York City. Her work
during this time was constructed
from junkyard scraps and driftwood
which she used to carve upright
wood sculptures.

The impurities of the wood were
then camouflaged with paint,
after which nails were employed
to invent holes and scratches in
the endeavor to portray some
emotion. The Sleeping Figure is
one such example which depicts a
war
figure that is unable to face the
real world due to vulnerability.
Throughout her life, Bourgeois's
work was created from revisiting
of her own troubled past as she
found inspiration and temporary
catharsis from her childhood years
and the abuse she suffered from
her father. Slowly she developed
more artistic confidence, although
her middle years are more opaque,
which might be due to the
fact that she received very little
attention from the art world
despite having her first solo show
in 1945.She became an American
citizen in 1951.
In 1954, Bourgeois joined the
American Abstract Artists Group,
with several contemporaries,
among them Barnett Newman
and Ad Reinhardt. At this time she
also befriended the artists Willem
de Kooning, Mark Rothko,
and Jackson Pollock.
As part of the American Abstract
Artists Group, Bourgeois made the
transition from wood and upright
structures to marble, plaster and
bronze as she investigated concerns
like fear, vulnerability and loss of
control. This transition was a
turning point. She referred to her
art as a series or sequence closely
related to days and circumstances,
describing her early work as the
fear of falling which later
transformed into the art of falling
and the final evolution as the art of
hanging in there. Her conflicts in
real life empowered her to
authenticate her experiences and
struggles through a unique art
form. In 1958, Bourgeois and her
husband moved into a terraced
house at West 20th Street, in
Chelsea, Manhattan, where she
lived and worked for the rest of her
life.
Despite the fact that she rejected
the idea that her art was feminist,
Bourgeois's subject was the
feminine. Works such as Femme
Maison (1946-1947), Torso selfportrait
(1963-1964), Arch of
Hysteria (1993), all depict the
feminine body.

In the late 1960's, her imagery
became more explicitly sexual as
she explored the relationship
between men and women and the
emotional impact of her troubled
childhood.
Sexually explicit sculptures such
as Janus Fleuri, (1968) show she
was not afraid to use the female
form in new ways. She has been
quoted to say "My work deals with
problems that are pre-gender,"
she wrote. "For example,
jealousy is not male or female."
With the rise of feminism,
her work found a wider audience.
Despite this assertion, in 1976
Femme Maison was featured on
the cover of Lucy Lippard's book
From the Center: Feminist Essays
on Women's Art and became an
icon of the feminist art movement.
Later life
In 1973, Bourgeois started
teaching at the Pratt Institute,
Cooper Union, Brooklyn College
and the New York Studio School
of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture.
From 1974 until 1977, Bourgeois
worked at the School of
Visual Arts in New York where she
taught printmaking and
sculpture.She also taught for many
years in the public
schools in Great Neck, Long Island.
In the early 1970s, Bourgeois would
hold gatherings called "Sunday,
bloody Sundays" at her home in
Chelsea. These salons would be
filled with young artists and
students whose work would be
critiqued by Bourgeois. Bourgeois
ruthlessness in critique and her dry
sense of humor lead to the naming
of these meetings. Bourgeois
inspired many young students to
make art that was feminist in
nature.However, Louise's long-time
friend and assistant, Jerry Gorovoy,
has stated that Louise considered
her own work "pre-gender".
Bourgeois aligned herself with
activists and became a member of
the Fight Censorship Group, a
feminist anti-censorship collective
founded by fellow artist Anita
Steckel. In the 1970s, the group
defended the use of sexual imagery
in artwork.Steckel argued, "If the
erect penis is not wholesome
enough to go into museums, it
should not be considered
wholesome enough to go into
women."

In 1978 Bourgeois was
commissioned by the General
Services Administration to create
Facets of the Sun, her first public
sculpture.The work was installed
outside of a federal building in
Manchester, New Hampshire.
Bourgeois received her first
retrospective in 1982, by the
Museum of Modern Art in New
York City. Until then, she had been
a peripheral figure in art whose
work was more admired than
acclaimed. In an interview with
Artforum, timed to coincide with
the opening of her retrospective,
she revealed that the imagery in
her sculptures was wholly
autobiographical. She shared with
the world that she obsessively
relived through her art the trauma
of discovering, as a child, that her
English governess was also her
father's mistress.
Bourgeois had another
retrospective in 1989 at
Documenta 9 in Kassel,
Germany.In 1993, when the Royal
Academy of Arts staged its
comprehensive survey of
American art in the 20th century,
the organizers did not consider
Bourgeois's work of significant
importance to include in the
survey.However, this survey was
criticized for many omissions, with
one critic writing that "whole
sections of the best American art
have been wiped out" and pointing
out that very few women were
included. In 2000 her works were
selected to be shown at the
opening of the Tate Modern in
London.In 2001, she showed at the
Hermitage Museum.
In 2010, in the last year of her life,
Bourgeois used her art to speak up
for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and
Transgender (LGBT) equality. She
created the piece I Do, depicting
two flowers growing from one
stem, to benefit the nonprofit
organization Freedom to Marry.
Bourgeois has said "Everyone
should have the right to marry. To
make a commitment to love
someone forever is a beautiful
thing."Bourgeois had a history of
activism on behalf of LGBT equality,
having created artwork for the AIDS
activist organization ACT UP in
1993.

Death
Bourgeois died of heart failure on
31 May 2010, at the Beth Israel
Medical Center in
Manhattan.Wendy Williams, the
managing director of the Louise
Bourgeois Studio, announced her
death. She had continued to create
artwork until her death, her last
pieces being finished the week
before.
Bourgeois explores the relationship
of a woman and the home. In the
works, women's heads have been
replaced with houses, isolating
their bodies from the outside world
and keeping their minds domestic.
This theme goes along with the
dehumanization of modern art.
The New York Times said that her
work "shared a set of repeated
themes, centered on the human
body and its need for nurture and
protection in a frightening world."
Her husband, Robert Goldwater,
died in 1973. She was survived by
two sons,
Alain Bourgeois and Jean-Louis
Bourgeois. Her first son, Michel,
died in 1990.
Work
See also: List of artworks by Louise
Bourgeois
Femme Maison
Main article: Femme Maison
Femme Maison (1946–47) is a
series of paintings in which
Destruction of the Father
Destruction of the Father (1974) is
a biographical and a psychological
exploration of the power
dominance of father and his
offspring. The piece is a flesh-toned
installation in a soft and womb-like
room. Made of plaster, latex, wood,
fabric, and red light, Destruction of
the Father was the first piece in
which she used soft materials on a
large scale. Upon entering the
installation, the viewer stands in
the aftermath of a crime. Set in a
stylized dining room (with the dual
impact of a bedroom), the abstract
blob-like children of an overbearing
father have rebelled, murdered,
and eaten him.

telling the captive audience how
great he is, all the wonderful
things he did, all the bad people
he put down today. But this goes
on day after day. There is tragedy
in the air. Once too often he has
said his piece. He is unbearably
dominating although probably he
does not realize it himself.
A kind of resentment grows and
one day my brother and I decided,
'the time has come!' We grabbed
him, laid him on the table and
with our knives dissected him. We
took him apart and dismembered
him, we cut off his penis. And he
became food. We ate him up he
was liquidated the same way he
liquidated the children
Exorcism in Art
In 1982, The Museum of Modern
Art in New York City featured
unknown artist,
Louise Bourgeois's work. She was
70 years old and a mixed media
artist who worked on paper, with
metal, marble and animal skeletal
bones. Childhood family traumas
"bred an exorcism in art" and she
desperately attempted to purge
her unrest with her work.
She felt she could get in touch with
issues of
female identity, the body,
the fractured family, long before
the art world and society
considered them expressed
subjects in art. This was
Bourgeous's way to find her center
and stabilize her emotional unrest.
The New York Times said at the
time that "her work is charged with
tenderness and violence,
acceptance and defiance,
ambivalence and conviction."
Cells
While in her eighties, Bourgeois
produced two series of enclosed
installation works she referred to as
Cells. Many are small enclosures
into which the viewer is prompted
to peer inward at arrangements of
symbolic objects; others are small
rooms into which the viewer is
invited to enter. In the cell pieces,
Bourgeois uses earlier sculptural
forms, found objects as well as
personal items that carried strong
personal emotional charge for the
artist.

The cells enclose psychological
and intellectual states, primarily
feelings of fear and pain.
Bourgeois stated that the Cells
represent "different types of pain;
physical, emotional and
psychological, mental and
intellectual ... Each
Cell deals with a fear. Fear is pain ...
Each Cell deals with the pleasure
of the voyeur, the thrill of looking
and being looked at."
Maman
Main article: Maman (sculpture)
In the late 1990s, Bourgeois began
using the spider as a central image
in her art. Maman, which stands
more than nine metres high, is a
steel and marble sculpture from
which an edition of six bronzes
were subsequently cast. It first
made an appearance as part of
Bourgeois's commission for The
Unilever Series for Tate Modern's
Turbine Hall in 2000, and recently,
the sculpture was installed at the
Qatar National Convention Centre
in Doha, Qatar.[35] Her largest
spider sculpture titled Maman
stands at over 30 feet (9.1 m) and
has been installed in numerous
locations around the world.It is
the largest Spider sculpture ever
made by Bourgeois. Moreover,
Maman
alludes to the strength of her
mother, with metaphors of
spinning, weaving, nurture and
protection. The prevalence of the
spider motif in her work has given
rise to her nickname as
Spiderwoman.
The Spider is an ode to my mother.
She was my best friend. Like a
spider, my mother was a weaver.
My family was in the business of
tapestry restoration, and my
mother was in charge of the
workshop. Like spiders, my mother
was very clever. Spiders are friendly
presences that eat mosquitoes. We
know that mosquitoes spread
diseases and are therefore
unwanted. So, spiders are helpful
and protective, just like my mother.
Maisons fragiles / Empty Houses
Bourgeois's Maisons fragiles /
Empty Houses sculptures are
parallel, high metallic structures
supporting a simple tray. One must
see them in person to feel their
impact. They are not threatening or
protecting, but bring out the
depths of anxiety within you.

Bachelard's findings from
psychologists' tests show that an
anxious child will draw a tall
narrow house with no base.
Bourgeois had a rocky/traumatic
childhood and this could support
the reason behind why these
pieces were constructed.
Printmaking
Bourgeois's printmaking
flourished during the early and
late phases of her career: in the
1930s and 1940s, when she first
came to New York from Paris, and
then again starting in the 1980s,
when her work began to receive
wide recognition. Early on, she
made prints at home on a small
press, or at the renowned
workshop Atelier 17. That period
was followed by a long hiatus, as
Bourgeois turned her attention
fully to sculpture. It was not until
she was in her seventies that she
began to make prints again,
encouraged first by print
publishers. She set up her old
press, and added a second, while
also working closely with printers
who came to her house to
collaborate. A very active phase of
printmaking followed, lasting until
the artist's death. Over the course
of her life, Bourgeois created
approximately 1,500 printed
compositions.
In 1990, Bourgeois decided to
donate the complete archive of her
printed work to The Museum of
Modern Art. In 2013, The Museum
launched the online catalogue
raisonné, "Louise Bourgeois: The
Complete Prints & Books." The site
focuses on the artist's creative
process and places Bourgeois's
prints and illustrated books within
the context of her overall
production by including related
works in other mediums that deal
with the same themes and imagery.
Pervasive themes
One theme of Bourgeois's work is
that of childhood trauma and
hidden emotion. After Louise's
mother became sick with influenza
Louise's father began having affairs
with other women, most notably
with Sadie, Louise's English tutor.
Louise was extremely watchful and
aware of the situation. This was the
beginning of the artist's
engagement with double standards
related to gender and sexuality,
which was expressed in much of
her work. She recalls her father
saying

"I love you" repeatedly to her
mother, despite infidelity.
"He was the wolf, and she was the
rational hare, forgiving and
accepting him as he was.
"Her 1993 work "Cell: You Better
Grow Up", part of her "Cell"
series, speaks directly to Louise's
childhood trauma and the
insecurity that surrounded her.
2002's "Give or Take" is defined by
hidden emotion, representing the
intense dilemma that people face
throughout their lives as they
attempt to balance the actions of
giving and taking. This dilemma is
not only represented by the shape
of the sculpture, but also the
heaviness of the material this
piece is made of.
Architecture and memory are
important components of
Bourgeois's work. In numerous
interviews, Louise describes
architecture as a visual expression
of memory, or memory as a type
of architecture. The memory
which is featured in much of her
work is an invented memory -
about the death or exorcism of
her father. The imagined memory is
interwoven with her real memories
including living across from a
slaughterhouse and her father's
affair. To Louise her father
represented injury and war,
aggrandizement of himself and
belittlement of others and most
importantly a man who
represented betrayal. Her 1993
work "Cell (Three White Marble
Spheres)" speaks to fear and
captivity. The mirrors within the
present an altered and distorted
reality.
Sexuality is undoubtedly one of the
most important themes in the work
of Louise Bourgeois. The link
between sexuality and fragility or
insecurity is also powerful. It has
been argued that this stems from
her childhood memories and her
father's affairs. 1952's "Spiral
Woman" combines Louise's focus
on female sexuality and torture.
The flexing leg and arm muscles
indicate that the Spiral Woman is
still above though she is being
suffocated and hung. 1995's "In
and Out" uses cold metal materials
to link sexuality with anger and
perhaps even captivity.

The spiral in her work demonstrates the dangerous search for
precarious equilibrium, accident-free permanent change, disarray,
vertigo, whirlwind. There lies the simultaneously positive and negative,
both future and past, breakup and return, hope and vanity, plan and
memory.
Louise Bourgeois's work is powered by confessions, self-portraits,
memories, fantasies of a restless being who is seeking through her
sculpture a peace and an order which were missing throughout her
childhood.

Parastou Forouhar born 1962 in
Tehran is an Iranian installation
artist who lives and works out of
Frankfurt, Germany. Forouhar’s
art reflects her criticism of the
Iranian government and often
plays with the ideas of identity.
Her artwork expresses a critical
response towards the politics in
Iran and Islamic Fundamentalism.
The loss of her parents fuels
Forouhar’s work and challenges
viewers to take a stand on war
crimes against innocent citizens.
Forouhar's work has been
exhibited around the world
including Iran, Germany, Russia,
Turkey, England, United States and
more.
Early life and education
The daughter of political activist
Parvaneh Forouhar and politician
Dariush Forouhar, Parastou was
born in 1962 in Tehran, Iran. Her
father critiqued the Iranian
government and he founded and
led the Hezb-e-Mellat-e Iran
(Nation Party of Iran), which was
a pan-Iranist opposition party in
Iran.
Her parents were stabbed in their
home in the November of 1998,
and Parastou relocated to Germany
in 1991, where she has continued
her work.She lives in exile because
she is considered a political threat
by the Iranian government.After
her parents' death, Parastou
channeled her grief into her art, her
art explores topics from democracy
to woman's rights to her parents'
murder.Parastou studied Art at the
University of Tehran from 1984
until 1990, where she earned her
B.A., she then continued to study at
the Hochschule für Gestaltung in
Offenbach am Main in Germany
and went on to earn her M.A. in
1994.Parastou lives with her two
children in Frankfurt Germany now.
Work
Forouhar's work is autobiographical
in nature and responds to the
politics that have shaped and
defined contemporary Iranian
citizenship both in Iran and
abroad.She works within a range of
media including site specific
installation, animation, digital
drawing, photography, signs and
products. Through her work
16

she processes very real
experiences of loss, pain, and
state-sanctioned violence through
animations, wallpapers, flipbooks,
and drawings.Forouhar uses
culturally specific motifs found
within traditional Iranian arts such
as Islamic calligraphy and Persian
miniature painting to question
the ways these forms can
generate a lack of individual
agency while adhering to a
standardized understanding of
beauty and cultural identity
Forouhar's work is a
utobiographical in nature and
responds to the politics that have
shaped and defined contemporary
Iranian citizenship both in Iran
and abroad. She works within a
range
of media including site specific
installation, animation, digital
drawing, photography, signs and
products. Through her work, she
processes very real experiences of
loss, pain, and state-sanctioned
violence through animations,
wallpapers, flipbooks, and
drawings. Forouhar uses
culturally specific motifs found
within traditional Iranian arts such
as Islamic calligraphy and Persian
miniature painting to question the
ways these forms can generate a
lack of individual agency while
adhering to a standardized
understanding of beauty and
cultural identity.
In 2012 she received the Sophie
von La Roche Award in recognition
for her work that confronts issues
concerning displacement, gender
and cultural identity.
Solo exhibitions of Forouhar's work
have been held at Stavanger
Cultural Center, Norway; Golestan
Art Gallery, Tehran; Hamburger
Bahnhof - Museum fur Gegenwart,
Berlin; City Museum, Crailsheim,
Germany; and German Cathedral,
Berlin.She has participated in group
exhibitions at Schim Kunsthalle,
Frankfurt; Frauenmuseum Bonn;
Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt;
Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum,
Joanneum, Graz,
Austria; House of World Cultures,
Berlin; Deutsches Hygiene-
Museum, Dresden; Jewish Museum
of Australia, Melbourne; and Jewish
Museum San Francisco.

Her work can be found in the
following permanent collections:
The Queensland Art Museum,
Queensland; Belvedere, Vienna;
Badisches Landesmuseum,
Karlsruhe; Museum of
Modern Art, Frankfurt; and the
Deutsche Bank Art Collection.
In 2002, the Iranian Cultural
Ministry censored Forouhar's
photo exhibition, Blind Spot, a
collection of images depicting a
veiled, gender-neutral figure
with a bulbous, featureless face.
Forouhar chose to exhibit the
empty frames on the wall on
opening night instead of forgoing
the show.
Forouhar and her brother got
involved in activism after their
parents got brutally murdered and
they weren't allowed to publicly
mourn or speak out about their
deaths. Her artwork critiques the
Iranian government and focuses on
examining her identity and culture.
Forouhar has been featured in
several art fairs including the
Brodsky Center Fair, at Rutgers
University in 2015, and Pi Artworks
fair Istanbul/London, in 2016 and
2017 (she was at both locations: in
Contemporary Istanbul and
London)

Abbas Kowsari was born in 1970, in Iran. He graduated in 1988 with a
diploma from Shariati High School in Tehran, where he continues to live
and work.
Kowsari has worked for over ten leading Iranian newspapers, most of
them now banned from publishing. He currently works as the senior
photo editor for E’temad newspaper in Tehran.
His photos have been published in Paris Match, Der Spiegel and Colors
magazine of Benetton, along with several other international
publications.
PHOTOGRAPHY
2006-present Photo Editor E’temad Newspaper
2007-present Photo Editor Sarmayeh Economics Newspaper
2003-present Photo Editor Haft Monthly Arts Magazine –Closed Down
Exhibitions
2008 Shade of Water – Shade of Earth, Aaran Art Gallery Tehran
2004 Muslims Muslims, La Vilette Paris
2003 Portraits, French Embassy Damascus
2002 Iran Contemporary Photographers, Assar Art Gallery Tehran
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