‘I do, I undo, I redo’: Louise Bourgeois and Samuel Beckett

IF 0.3 4区 文学 0 LITERARY THEORY & CRITICISM JOURNAL OF BECKETT STUDIES Pub Date : 2023-04-01 DOI:10.3366/jobs.2023.0389
J. Bates
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Abstract

Louise Bourgeois and Samuel Beckett were both from comfortably bourgeois families; both had a strained relationship with one parent and undertook psychoanalytic treatment while grieving the deaths of their fathers; both were academically successful and placed great emphasis on studying; both were marked by the First and Second World Wars; both experienced the disorientations and liberations of exile and working between languages; and finally, after a period of relative neglect, both achieved celebrity and critical acclaim later in life.   Drawing on Bourgeois’s notebooks and diaries in her New York archive, in which Beckett makes fleeting appearances, this article presents a comparative reading of Bourgeois and Beckett, and identifies a significant number of affinities in their creative preoccupations and strategies, points of confluence that call into question assumptions by their respective critics that their creative practice is exceptional. A comparative reading with a female artist has the additional benefit of situating Beckett outside the masculinist heritage in which he has been inscribed, and brings into focus the gender bias that has been evident in both sets of scholarship. At once modernist and contemporary due to their longevity and the variety of their prolific output (over seventy years for Bourgeois and sixty for Beckett), Bourgeois and Beckett have both been successfully canonised: vital points of reference for artists and writers today, exhibitions and productions of their work also draw huge crowds. Their respective critics have hailed the work of Bourgeois and Beckett as remarkable and distinctive, setting them apart from their fellow artists and writers. They share a creative strategy, however: both dedicated themselves to a narrow range of themes and pursued these through the adoption of a diverse range of media, play with scale, and an unceasing experimentation with form.
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“我做,我撤消,我重做”:路易丝·布尔乔亚和塞缪尔·贝克特
路易斯·布尔乔亚和塞缪尔·贝克特都出身于舒适的资产阶级家庭;两人都与父母一方关系紧张,在为父亲的去世感到悲痛的同时接受了心理分析治疗;两人在学术上都很成功,都非常注重学习;两者都以第一次和第二次世界大战为标志;两人都经历了流亡和在语言之间工作的迷失方向和解放;最后,经过一段时间的相对忽视,两人在后来的生活中都获得了名人和评论界的赞誉。本文借鉴了布尔乔亚在其纽约档案中的笔记本和日记,贝克特在其中短暂露面,对布尔乔亚和贝克特进行了比较解读,并确定了他们在创作关注点和策略方面的大量相似之处,他们各自的批评者认为他们的创作实践是非同寻常的,这一点令人质疑。与一位女艺术家进行比较阅读还有一个额外的好处,那就是将贝克特置于他所继承的男性主义传统之外,并使人们关注到在两套学术中都明显存在的性别偏见。由于其悠久的历史和丰富的作品(布尔乔亚70多年,贝克特60多年),布尔乔亚和贝克特同时被现代主义和当代主义所推崇:今天艺术家和作家的重要参考点,他们的作品展览和制作也吸引了大批观众。他们各自的评论家都称赞布尔乔亚和贝克特的作品非凡而独特,使他们与其他艺术家和作家不同。然而,他们有一个共同的创作策略:都致力于狭窄的主题范围,并通过采用不同的媒体、规模游戏和不断的形式实验来追求这些主题。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
0.20
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发文量
33
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