LOUISE BOURGEOIS (1911-2010),
Cultural Tie (No No No), 2000
LIMITED EDITION Artists Tie - Collectors Item, Art Investment, or buy it to wear!
- 61% silk, 39% cotton
- Limited edition of 300
- Artist's embroidered signature on the back of neck tie.
- Boxed in a specially made acrylic case.
- Numbered 284/300 on accompanying guarantee card.
- Made in Italy. The tie measures 4" at its widest point.
- Made in Italy
- BRAND NEW tie, only removed from box for photos. Never worn. Acrylic case in perfect condition. Cardboard sleeve is a little worn on the edges (as shown in photos).
"No" was created by Louise Bourgeois as her contribution to "Cultural Ties", a series of artist-designed neckties benefiting UNICEF. Bourgeois necktie design reproduces "No" in white and blue/gray throughout, with the artists signature embroidered in red thread on the inner turquoise lining.
This is the desire to be clear... it is an attempt... it is a wish. I want to say no, but I am a pushover. Obedience is the big word... sometimes I obey, but I am never convinced. I go through the motions because I have never been taught to be obedient... but behind this, I never give in. Never giving in makes it hard to learn to forgive... it does not come naturally...
-- Louise Bourgeois
Cultural Ties was an exciting and unique fusion of art and fashion. This imaginative global project was the brain child of London art dealer Kapil Jariwala: the brief was for seventy-seven leading artists from around the world to design neck tie mock-ups which were translated into textile format by Como, Italys Ratti silk factory. A limited edition, only 300 of each tie, were produced and sold worldwide via selected retail outlets, gallery shops and the internet. The project, in association with UNICEF, was supported by Gavin Aldred, owner of the Westzonegalleryspace, where the artwork for the project was exhibited, and Westzone Publishing Ltd.
"Art and fashion have come together for Cultural Ties, a project that aims to raise $1m (about pounds 700,000) for Unicefs clean-water campaign. Artists such as the Chapman Brothers, Jeff Koons and Louise Bourgeois have each come up with a unique design for a necktie, and these have been produced in a limited-edition of 300 by Versaces tie-maker."
-- Independent, The (London), November 12, 2000
Louise Bourgeois was born in 1911 in Paris. She entered the Sorbonne to study mathematics in 1932 but turned to art the next year, enrolling at several art schools, including the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, in addition to apprenticing in artists studios in Montparnasse and Montmartre. She emigrated to New York, in 1938, and continued her studies at the Art Students League. Her first one-person exhibition was held at the Bertha Schaefer Gallery, New York, in 1945, and her sculpture was first shown in 1949 at the Peridot Gallery, New York. Greatly influenced by the influx of European Surrealist artists who immigrated to the United States after World War II, Bourgeois's early sculpture was composed of groupings of abstract and organic shapes, often carved from wood. By the 1960s she began to execute her work in rubber, bronze, and stone, and the pieces themselves became larger, more referential to what has become the dominant theme of her work - her childhood. She has famously stated “My childhood has never lost its magic, it has never lost its mystery, and it has never lost its drama.” Deeply symbolic, her work uses her relationship with her parents and the role sexuality played in her early family life as a vocabulary in which to understand and remake that history. The anthropomorphic shapes her pieces take - the female and male bodies are continually referenced and remade - are charged with sexuality and innocence and the interplay between the two.
In 1982 the Museum of Modern Art, New York, organized a retrospective, which traveled to various American venues. Her work has since been shown internationally, including in Documenta 9 (1992) and the São Paulo Bienal of 1996. Bourgeoiss first European retrospective was organized in 1989, traveling from the Frankfurter Kunstverein to the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, and the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, among other venues. Bourgeois represented the United States at the Venice Biennale in 1993. Tate Modern, London, organized a major traveling retrospective of her work in 2007. Bourgeois's work is in the collections of most major museums around the world. She lives in New York.
