The purpose of this paper is to understand the power of art as self-healing and self-examination, through the life and works of the sculptor Louise Bourgeois.
Louise Bourgeois may have been a model artist who seek self-healing through her art
work and sublimate her life. With her trauma expressed in her abstract portraiture, sexual
images, or erotic forms, in addition to her using various objet and techniques such as
sculpture, bronze work, or fabric drawing, Louise Bourgeois criticized patriarchy and self
proposed the problems of pain and solitude of human existence.
The study objects are 20 pieces of Louise's work that are further categorized tripartite in
accordance with Erikson's developmental task. In other words, the study objects consist of 6
pieces from adult period or study period, 6 pieces from middle age period using various
media, and 8 pieces from old age period to try sublimation of her life through her art.
A shadow sitting deep in her unconscious or subconscious that is settled from her life
experience before the study period gave Louise a probing process through totem styled
woodwork. During her middle age, Louise used latex and metal to express the coexistence of
soft femininity and strong masculinity and to confront the dismantled unconsciousness. In her
old age, Louise tried to contain forgiveness and embracement in her sublimational world of
art, and conceive that we are better to confront in a constructive way than to avoid the life
problems we are facing.
In conclusion, Louise Bourgeois symbolically projected in her art work her painful memories
of reality and subconscious, that resemble art therapy of some Freudian psychoanalysis on
the one hand and art therapy of some Jungian subconscious expression of self-examination
on the other hand. Also her various art pieces of her life reflect the changes in the different
developmental stages of her life, in that art work is life and life is art work for her.
My suggestion for further studies based on the above conclusion is as follows. Among her
various and numerous art production through her lifetime of 90 years, the drawing part of her
works can be more scrutinized in connection with psychological analysis, to the extent that
the self-healing power of art can be achieved in an artist' dedication of life to art.
Key Words : Trauma, Self Healing, Sublimate