Louise Bourgeois brought nudity to Seattle

When Stu Smailes died in 2002 at age 69, he left a challenge to Seattle. If the city would commission an artist to create a  “fully articulated,
realistic male nude” and place it in a prominent public spot surrounded by a fountain, he’d underwrite it with $1 million.

Naturally, the city punted. (Where did Smailes think he was living, Florence?) The city passed Smailes’ proposal to the Seattle Art Museum, then in the process of creating the Olympic Sculpture Park. Lisa Corrin, then SAM’s curator of contemporary art, commissioned designs from three finalists, Anthony Gormley, Glenn Ligon and Louise Bourgeois.

Smailes was the kind of person who ate dessert before dinner. He wanted to leave behind him a lovely penis in a public place. Gormley entered in the spirit of the donor, suggesting a male figure from whose erect member water flowed.
Ligon’s idea was subtler, a male looking into a water pond and
seeing his own reflection.
Gormley’s design was possibly too explicit, even for Corrin. And
while Ligon’s was quieter, it came
with a less active water element than Smailes envisioned.

That left Bourgeois, who got the nod for Father and Son. Her design
features the family pair facing each other as water plays over the
surface of one body and then the other, forever separating one from the other. Bourgeois isn’t known for fountains or for realistic nudes, male or female.
But she’s recognized for the range and flexibility of her 
production.
She dealt with the figure in both sculptures and
drawings, leaning toward psychologically rich content with
Freudian overtones. She was interested in how family dynamics shape lives.
But most of all, she was interested in how she could use content, any
content, to create art.

Bourgeois:

The subject is only the subject. So it’s not a
mystery. The mystery resides in what you do with it.

Bourgeois died Monday at age 98. (New York Times obit here.)

Her achievement is towering, but not in Seattle. After looking at her fountain for several years, I think it stands as her worst work ever. Even water jets cannot animate her awkward father and son, nude for no reason beyond the patron’s stipulation. The water was supposed to cover one and reveal the other, but it tends to cover or reveal each together.

If only Smailes had harbored an interest in giant spiders.

(Image via)

If  Smailes were alive and allowed a vote, doubtless he would have gone for Gormley. I didn’t have a vote either, but I would have gone for Ligon. On the other hand, Bourgeois threw in two sets of eyeball benches in black granite, and they rock. Kids growing up in Seattle will remember sitting on eyeballs, which could be all they need to jump start their lifelong  interest in art.