Room Guide - Room 4

Most of Bourgeois's Personages sculptures were originally exhibited as isolated figures. But gradually she began to group them in various configurations, ultimately bringing several together on a single base, as in Quarantania I and One and Others shown in this room. As she said, 'My work grows from the duel between the isolated individual and the shared awareness of the group.'

Bourgeois made several versions of the sculpture known as The Blind Leading the Blind 1947-9, also shown in this room. Some were given alternative titles; others were painted red, black or pink. The current title refers to the biblical parable, in which spiritual uncertainty is echoed or symbolised by physical instability. Similarly, the 'legs' of Bourgeois’s sculpture are slightly unsteady; precariously held together as a group by a top-mounted cross beam.

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Untitled
1950
Ink on paper
Courtesy Cheim & Read, Galerie Karsten Greve and Galerie Hauser & Wirth © Louise Bourgeois Photo: Christopher Burke

Untitled
1951
Ink on paper
Courtesy Cheim & Read, Galerie Karsten Greve and Galerie Hauser & Wirth © Louise Bourgeois Photo: Christopher Burke

Regrettable Incident in the Louvre Palace
1947
Oil on canvas
Courtesy Cheim & Read, Galerie Karsten Greve and Galerie Hauser & Wirth © Louise Bourgeois Photo: Christopher Burke

One and Others
1955
Painted and stained wood
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Quarantania I 1947–53
Wood, painted white with blue and black
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Ruth Stephan Franklin, 1970

This is one of the few sculptures in Bourgeois’s Personage series which consist of fixed groups, rather than single figures. The five abstract shapes were originally conceived as individual pieces, and exhibited separately.

Bourgeois later mounted them together on a single base to represent her family unit: husband, wife and three sons. The central figure, with the three ‘packages’, is Bourgeois herself, carrying her children around her waist. The tallest figure is the father.

The Blind Leading The Blind
1947–9
Wood, painted pink
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, Regents Collections Acquisition Program with Matching Funds from the Jerome L Greene, Agnes Gund, Sydney and Frances Lewis, and Leonard C Yaseen Purchase Fund, 1989

This is one of a number of wooden sculptures which Bourgeois made by carving and assembling leftover beams, like those used by local builders in the construction of water-towers.

The sculpture was originally called The Blind Vigils; Bourgeois re-named it after a painting of the biblical parable told in St Matthew’s gospel. The pathos of humanity suggested by the bible story is reflected in the work, whose ‘legs’ are slightly unsteady; they wouldn’t stand up on their own, but are held together by a top-mounted cross beam.

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Louise Bourgeois with Spider IV in 1996. Photo: Peter Bellamy