Louise Bourgeois | Art21 | Preview from Season 1 of "Art in the Twenty-First Century" (2001)

Though her beginnings were as an engraver and painter, by the 1940s Louise Bourgeois had turned her attention to sculptural work for which she is now recognized as a twentieth-century leader. By the 1960s she began to execute her work in rubber, bronze, and stone, and the pieces themselves became more referential to themes of family, home and childhood.

Louise Bourgeois is featured in the Season 1 episode "Identity" of the Art21 series "Art:21 -- Art in the Twenty-First Century".

Learn more about Louise Bourgeois: http://www.art21.org/artists/louise-bourgeois

© 2001-2008 Art21, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

[Intro music]

[birds chirping]

and instead of trying to rival the height of the building

I have made a sculpture which is

so discrete and so sensitive

that my sculpture doesn't have a boom of contention

with the building

[birds chirping]

The beauty of it is that the block of black stone is one with this

so that is quite something

now this is lost in a lot of people

they don't know how beautiful it is, they don't have to know.

What I'm concerned with this here is vandalism, right?

You see how fragile it is, just to, I'm not going to give you ideas now,

but just a knock on this, and the thing is over.

So, it is a leap of faith to put this in an open space

but I take a chance.