Dear Architect,

On December 25th, this year, we will celebrate Louise Bourgeois' 100th birthday.

We will also celebrate, as every year, Christmas Day.

This "coincidence" made us reflect on certain themes that we feel are important for human life in general, and for our time in particular.

 

We wrote two invitational texts by the way of this "coincidental" celebration:

 

A HOUSE FOR LOUISE BOURGEOIS

&

THE HOUSE OF MACULATE CONCEPTION

 

If these two texts inspire you, or provoke you, we would be happy to receive a new contribution from you to the virtual architectural museum our site is beginning to be.

 

The deadline is December 25th, 2011.

 

Thank you very much and we wish you to be well!

ICARCH Gallery



  

 

 

A HOUSE FOR LOUISE BOURGEOIS

 

 

To create a “St. Sebastienne”, that is, a female “St. Sebastien”, is iconoclastic and challenging in itself. To make the sculpture of pink fabric, as if it was a childhood doll, is doubly so.

 

The intelligence of Louise Bourgeois in dealing with anxiety, fear and other “dark” emotional states is obvious.

 

Equally obvious is her talent to challenge taboos in art, with a persistence that only her long life (she died at almost 99, last year) matched.

 

We feel she was / is a major artist.

 

And on the occasion of her centennial (she was born on December 25^th, 1911) we want to invite you to conceive:

 

A HOUSE FOR LOUISE BOURGEOIS

 

If we are to accept Robert Mapplethorpe’s provocative picture of the sculptress, showing an aged woman carrying a big phallus under her arm and displaying a mischievous smile, we are to accept her provocative intelligence and non-conformism.

 

To say about an artist that she is a non-conformist is to state the obvious and to formulate a platitude.

 

But we feel Louise Bourgeois is almost “programmatically” so, a “non-conformist” artist.

 

Is / was she serious, is / was she joking…?

 

It is through her intelligence, we believe, that she was able to bring mischievousness into her handling of very “hard” themes like fear, loneliness, anxiety, “destroying the father.”

 

This very theme, in a society still dominated by the mythical, or not so mythical, FATHER, is in itself a great contribution to challenging the taboos!

 

She rebelled against her FATHER, FATHER, FATHER, omnipotent, domineering, infallible.

 

Perhaps she adored her father.

 

She also, it seems, hated him.

 

But to rebel, programmatically, against the father is to rebel, programmatically, against A WHOLE CULTURE.

 

A culture that imagined, and continues to imagine, that St. Sebastian can only be a man.

 

But the pink doll whose body is pierced by arrows protests.

 

But she protests in a feminine way, NOT lecturing.

 

There is no dogma, no preaching.

 

A silent, almost playful form of protest, pink.

 

Please design A HOUSE FOR LOUISE BOURGEOIS, the HOUSE OF INTELLIGENCE, MISCHIEVOUSNESS AND SEX.

 

And let us not forget the SPIDER, proof that she didn’t forget Maman either…

 

Please send us ANY work, ANY size and ANY format that responds to the theme and we will publish all of them.

 

Thank you,

 

ICARCH Gallery

 



 

 

THE HOUSE OF MACULATE CONCEPTION

 

 

The word “maculate” comes from the Latin word “maculatus,” past principle of “maculare,” to stain, from “macula.”

 

Maculare… to stain…

 

How would a STAINED HOUSE look like…?!?

 

A “dirty,” besmirched house…?!?

 

The very opposite of clean, cleanness…?!?

 

On December 25th we celebrate Christmas, the birth of Christ, conceived through an “immaculate conception”…

 

But what about the “maculate” one, the “dirty” one that is destined for most women, on this earth…?!?

 

Why would a birth, ANY birth, be associated with “dirt”…?!?

 

And why would Christ’s birth, in contrast, be considered
”immaculate…?!?”

 

Michelangelo was not afraid to depict all the biblical characters of his immense fresco “The Last Judgment,” on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, WITHOUT any underwear, NAKED!

 

NAKED – “vulgar,” “dirty,” “maculate”

 

So afterwards, some twenty four years later, the painter Daniele da Volterra came in, at the request of the church, to dress up these giant, “larger than life” figures, with the insulting panties… to veil the “dirty” genitalia which Michelangelo left exposed… but by doing so we believe that the actual dirt was in fact “in the eyes of the beholder,” that is, in the eyes of those who required this “purification…”

 

THE FEAR OF SEX.

 

This, in a way, is the description, at bottom, of the Abrahamic religions.

 

And the fight keeps going on, more than two thousands years later.

 

The fight keeps going on.

 

We ask you to design A STAINED HOUSE.

 

As “stained” as a woman is “stained,” when she conceives.

 

THE HOUSE OF MACULATE CONCEPTION.

 

A “DIRTY” HOUSE.

 

THE HOUSE OF “DIRT”

 

Even worse, THE HOUSE OF SEXUAL “DIRT.”

 

Dedicate this house to the French American sculptress Louise Bourgeois, born on December 25^th, 1011.

 

Design the HOUSE OF “DIRT” dear architect and send us your work by the very date when, more than two thousands years ago, the “immaculate conception” took place.

 

Please send us ANY work, ANY size and ANY format that responds to the theme by December 25^th, 2011.

 

Thank you,

 

ICARCH Gallery