When I started searching for the information of artist who affected by childhood experiences, I first thought of Louise Bourgeois. The artist's work is related to the relationship between people, betrayal, vengeance, anxiety, confusion, attack, injustice, loneliness, abstract esoteric but with emotional shock. She was attracted to these themes all her life, but she constantly changed materials, styles, forms, and explored them over and over again, so the works were rich and changeable.
The Trauma Of Abandonment, 2001
Fabric, cover: 12 1/2 x 9 3/4" (31.8 x 24.8 cm)
Disappointment with her father and childhood nightmare is her artistic motivation: In June 2008, the Film Forum in New York premiered the documentary "Louis Bourgeois: Spider, Mistress, and Orange" which record the inner world of female artists.
However, this documentary was inspired by an embarrassing memory. When she was a child, she lived with her father, mother, and private teacher. Later, she found that her father had a sexual relationship with her female tutor. Her mother endured everything. These three of her favorite people betrayed her. She felt psychologically irritated, embarrassed, and painful. Once, the father used orange peel and inserted a penis-like thing to make a piece of art called the "ideal daughter" to degrade her daughter, this incident stabbed her. Although she had a good love and marriage ,she never erased her hatred of her father. She said, "I must be right. Turning a blind eye to the father's lover who lives with us, turning a blind eye to my mother's pain, turning a blind eye to the abnormal relationship between my sister and the man across the street. Spiders, mistresses, and oranges, these three things that don't sound irrelevant, but in Bourgeois Life is connected to each other and entangles her life.
Her childhood depression and embarrassment influenced her life's creation. She said: My childhood has never lost its magic, lost its mystery, and lost its drama. She said: "Sculpture is the process of self-recognition!" Her work seems to be different every time, but the theme is the same: to get rid of fear. Hiding, running away, showing, expelling, shame in front of it, and finally becoming a fear of fear.
Childhood memories have always been the main source of inspiration for Bourgeois, although those memories are full of pain and discomfort. As a girl who is not expected at home, Bourgeois is not valued by her father. The relationship between the two is like a gravel on a cliff. It has been on the verge of crumbling. This precarious emotional conflict is also thoroughly seen in Bourgeois’s father’s mistress’s arrival. Was pushed to the extreme.
The Destruction of the Father, 1974, plaster, latex, wood, fabric, and red light, courtesy Cheim and Read, Galerie Karsten Greve and Hauser & Wirth,
photo by Rafael Lobato
Bourgeois said: "In order to express my inner fear, I must find a way to vent my heart's emotions. Through constant destruction, repair and rebirth, I completed my revenge, and my inner pain was calmed down..." In 1973, After her husband and father died, Bourgeois created a very intense installation art called The Destruction Of The Father. This work vents its long-suppressed emotions, she admits: “The Destruction of the Father has eliminated my fears that have existed for many years. I have always been interested in how to overcome fear, hide fear, and escape. Fear, face fear, eliminate fear, be ashamed of fear and fear, and ultimately fear is fear itself. This is the theme of the work.”
Cell (Glass spheres and hands), 1990-1993
glass, iron, wood, linoleum, canvas, marble
(a-m) 219.5 × 218.8 × 220.0 cm (installation)
That is to say, bourgeois uses various media for memories, circumstances, and personal situations in her life. The art work created is an additional product of its own on the road of self-salvation. Its fundamental purpose is not to create more meaningful creations. She does not care whether it is necessary to emphasize the value attribute of the works to society because Her purpose in creating art is to reconcile, repair, and present the inner world of the subconscious, to dispel the restless emotions that accompany her life, and to control the true peace of the inner heart by controlling another form. What about me? What is the form or material to expresses pain, and what is my background? This is what I need to think about next.
My bed, 1998
Tracey Emin, according to her own life, created the installation in 1998 named My Bed. She conveyed her pain from the past in a simple, frank, and cruel way. Moreover, in this work, she showed dirtiness and bashfulness. The messy and shabby bed filled with used condoms, bloody underwear, hygiene towels, vodka bottles, pillboxes, empty cigarette cases, broken slippers, and dirty blue carpet. These items are the objects that Tracey's emotions transferred to, which can be seen as her early experience. Unfortunate experience in childhood and adult life have become a direct source of artists' artistic creation. The creator's transference through art and the artwork shows the artists' psychological activities. And artists' profound symbolic experience changes audiences' perceptions and changes the artist's mental status. Schiaverien (2006) called experiences a bridge between internal and external, private and public.
Bibliography
Schaverien, J. (2006) 'Art and active imagination: Reflection on transference and the image1', International Journal of Art Therapy, 10(2), pp. 39-52.