Blog Archive

31/03/2015

Drawing, Untitled 1967

Untitled 1967




In a book on her drawings, Louise Bourgeois comments on several drawings in a very straight forward and personal manner. The words she accompanies with the drawing above are as follows: 
This refers to a line that is not there. It has to do with the horizon. If you stand in front of a lake, you have shapes above and you have shapes reflected in the water. If the area below the horizon is just reality reflected in the water, this drawing implies that the fantasy life of the reflection is richer and more beautiful than reality. The reflection in the water is darker, more dramatic. It doesn't have the serenity of the landscape above the water. See, as you go deeper and deeper into the reflection it is not that pretty, it is not that peaceful.
Louise Bourgeois with Lawrence Rinder, Drawings and observations, pag 127, 1995

I have always liked this drawing. I got familiar with Bourgeois work at the Rietveld Academy in 2007. The image makes me think of the moment when an idea appears in my head for a great new work. But when I imagine this to be a real figure in space, I realize that it can never stand. 
At first this drawing inspired me to draw installations that only exist in the space of a drawing. I made several attempts to build big sculptures, but they were only as exiting in my drawings as they were in my head. 

Later, April 2014 to be precise, the drawing appeared in the work of a man I met in an Art therapy group in Curacao. The man painted big colorful balls on wood with black lines around them. I showed him the drawing above and he immediately liked it. He made me a drawing of this drawing.

There is something in the act of drawing that I want to adress. The point where the pencil touches the paper, the conglomeration of thoughts and images….

John Berger divides drawings in three categories in his essay 'Drawing' from 1987: the ones drawn from perception, the ones that communicate an idea and the ones drawn from memory. I consider bourgeois' drawing to be in the second category. Is the copy drawing by the man then from catagory 1, perception?