· By Andre Woolery
Louise Bourgeois, Sunday Community Exchange
Louise Bourgeois' Sunday Salons
Louise Bourgeois worked in deep solitude, preferring to create alone in silence like a trance. Her longtime assistant Jerry Gorovoy remembered that the least noise would upset her. She carved out private spaces even within her shared home and studio, believing solitude was essential to her creative process.
Yet beginning in the early 1970s and continuing for over 30 years until her death in 2010, Bourgeois hosted Sunday Salons every week at her Chelsea brownstone on West 20th Street. Her phone number was publicly listed and entry was open to anyone who called ahead, with only two rules: no colds, and you must bring your work. Students, young artists, established figures like Joan Jonas, Jonas Mekas, and Guillermo Kuitca, and international visitors gathered in her parlor.
Bourgeois called them "Sunday, bloody Sundays" for her ruthlessly honest critiques. Artists presented their work for discussion in sessions Gorovoy described as part portfolio review, part group therapy. "It can become like group therapy. People can break down and leave crying," he said. On occasion, attendees fought, got jealous, took their clothes off, or were thrown out. In her nineties, Bourgeois still presided over every salon.
Despite her need for solitary creation, Bourgeois understood community was equally essential. She wrote in a 1987 diary entry: "You are born alone. You die alone. The value of the space in between is trust and love... Everything comes to you from the other. You have to be able to reach the other. If not you are alone."
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To explore the full framework behind this story, pull card #55 in the Creative Mastermind Deck
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