Louise Bourgeois
b. 1911, France
The Good Mothers, 2007
Gouache on paper
59.7 x 45.7 cm
The Good Mothers is one of Louise Bourgeois’s gouache paintings made late in her career, three years before her passing at the age of 98. A surreal portrayal of two feminine figures defined by their multiple pendulous breasts and bulging wombs, their bodies are exposed in their transfigured glory as their bold outlines bleed and coalesce into the paper, forming organic marks that only strengthen the corporeality of the image. The exaggerated and abstracted forms portrayed in The Good Mothers thus delves into Bourgeois’s desire to compensate for her feelings of inadequacy as a mother upon the birth of her children, as she commented, “There I was, a wife and mother, and I was afraid of my family… afraid not to measure up.” As the depicted forms bleed into each other, this work deviates from her usual portrayals of the feminine figure as a lone form. Instead, the work draws parallels between her motherhood and her close relationship with her own mother, who passed away when Bourgeois was 20 years old, rekindling her pursuit of attachment.
Photo: Sipa US / Alamy Stock Photo
Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) was a French-American artist working with various forms, materials, and scales across painting, printmaking, and sculpture. Seeking refuge in her artistic practice to balance the turbulence in her personal history, Bourgeois wove autobiographical elements with imagined memories by blurring the lines between figuration and abstraction. Her works are thus viscerally emotive pieces that not only probe at deeply confessional and psychological themes of loneliness, jealousy, anger, and fear, but also challenge pre-existing conceptions of femininity and motherhood. The first artist commissioned to fill the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, Bourgeois is considered one of the most prominent artists of the 20th century. Bourgeois’s works have been the subject of major exhibitions at Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2024), Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2023), Museum of Modern Art, New York (2017), and Haus der Kunst, Munich (2015). Major holdings of work include the Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
