Cathy's Art Diary

Interesting exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery of drawings by Lousie Bourgeois. The show featured works from the 1960s and highlighted Bourgeois daily practice of drawing. These works come from a period following course of psychoanalysis and a hiatus from the art world. The drawings echo her sculptures on show in another show in the gallery at the time as well as the curves of landscapes and bodies. They also move from a monotone period to using more colour. I didn't find myself responding to the works but I loved the quotes from Bourgeois on drawing such as "the drawings allow me to pinpoint and define anxiety. And to turn it at least into fear." and calling drawing "thought feathers".    Closed 14 September 2025

Baffling exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery of work by three female artists of the late 20th century. I found the concept of the "abstract erotic" wasn’t well explained and got confused with the idea of "eccentric abstraction" both coined by American art critic Lucy Lippard. As far as I can tell both involved the use of unex cepted materials and often took a sensual approach to abstraction. The first room contained works by all three artists to illustrate this. The second room devoted a section to each artists, Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse and Alice Adams, with an overview of their career and was more approachable. Closed 14 September 2025 Reviews Times Guardian Telegraph

Welcome return of Louise Bourgeois’s giant spider sculpture to Tate Modern to mark 25 years since it was the first art work to greet visitors to the then newly opened gallery. I don’t remember seeing the work at the time so this was a lovely opportunity to fill that gap. It suits the space on the bridge of the Turbine Hall beautifully. This is a lovely way to mark the anniversary. Entitled “Maman” I hadn’t realised the sculpture includes a sack of eggs which seems to give it an infinite future. Closes 25 August 2025

Interesting exhibition at the Hayward Gallery of work by Louise Bourgeois using clothes from all stages of her life. This was a moving show as it featured pieces from the last 20 years of Bourgeois’s life using clothes which she had saved. In doing this the work felt like it was the story of her whole life experience.  I knew her work featuring large spiders, and there were a couple of works which incorporated these, but I didn’t know a lot about her other work and found it very tender. Her mother had been a tapestry restorer and I found the pieces using textiles saved from her particularly beautiful. The work looked beautiful in the open, brutalist space and were well set out so they spoke to each other. Closes 15 May 2022 Reviews Times Guardian Telegraph Evening Standard  

Interesting exhibition at Tate Modern of drawings and prints by Louise Bourgeois. I knew this artist purely as ‘the big spider lady’ and therefore had slightly avoided her work as I hate spiders but this show opened my eyes to why she liked the motif of a spider and her other work.   She used spiders as her family’s business had been in tapestry. The show started with a very tender set of etchings including a woman washing her hair and a man sleeping in a chair. I also liked a set of fabric books she had made from cloth she had kept for a long time such as the napkins from her trousseau. Some of these made up a visual poem to the river she had grown up near. I found the work quite gentle and personal and a nice contrast to the rather bombastic Polke.