RIP Louise Bourgeois
The world has lost not only one of its great sculptors, but one of the last living avatars of those delightfully tarnished angels who used fashion with originality and humour, rather than allowing themselves to be used by it. There’s only Anna Piaggi and Daphne Guinness left now.
Louise: Say hi to Millicent Rogers and Isabella Blow for us; I’m SURE they’ll be happy to see you.
Millicent Rogers rose above the others, in my view. And what about Nancy Cunard?
Agree on Millicent Rogers: if she hadn’t been Millicent Freaking Rogers, she’d have been a Huntress-type superhero/supervillainess.
Nancy Cunard always struck me as just too deliberate about everything. She had the spontaneity of a NASA rocket launch, and that includes her approach to fashion. It’s a risk with people who have a “signature look,” that they just aren’t themselves without the … MacGuffin…armful of bangles, sassy hat, pearl dog collar, whatever. Look at Princess Diana and her haircut; by the end, it was wearing HER.
OK. Point taken on Nancy Cunard, but you must admit she was ravishingly beautiful.
For me Louise Bourgeois’s message was all about her hatred for men, another one-note johnny artist.
What about Meret Oppenheim?
Meh. I can’t say she was really a style icon; she mostly liked to get her kit off, as the Brits say.
Louise Bourgeois hated father figures, yes, but she ALSO hated mothers. I walked around her huge Maman sculpture in Ottawa and only a woman who loathed and feared the entire process of reproduction and it’s after-effects (human life) could have created such a thing.
You want one-note? Brace yourself: Frieda Kahlo. There, I said it. Now Madonna’s going to get every second-rate Feminist Art major in the hemisphere to kill me.
You want an artist who was also a style icon? How about Remedios Varo?
http://randomknowledge.wordpress.com/2006/12/08/remedios-varo/
Or Louise Nevelson:
http://www.ryerecord.com/Rye%20Record%20Website%2006.08.07/html%20pages/columnartbeat2.htm