The Red Room
The Red Room is a relevant work and key to understanding the life and works of Louise Bourgeois. “The Spider, Mistress, and Tangerine” by Marion Cajori and Amie Wallach Focused on Louise Bourgeois. The documentary highlights numerous pieces of art from her life. One of the works shown is The Red Room.
The
Red Room is an installation of immense undertaking in its
entirety. Its dimensions are 210.8x138.9x108 it was created in 1994. In looking
at the structure it is built of vintage, sold, dark wood doors hinged together
in two spiral shapes, but it has slight angles where the seams of the doors
come together. These two pieces correlate. One is The Child’s Room the
other is The Parent’s Room. Inside this installation is filled with red pieces
of art that are replicating moments of time and memories.
In
the instillations inner rooms, the color red is used throughout the piece. The
color signifies the” color of blood. Blood and pain are connected therefore the
color red represents pain.” The pain is represented in memories and time-lapses
of the red pieces. These pieces in the child’s room show a pair of child’s
hands clasped by adult hands. In this room, there are different size bolts of
red threads and varying shapes and sizes of hourglasses. These lead you into
the spiral of the parent’s room. The parent’s room is symbolic of a more mature
room. The room contains a double bed made in red with end tabled cabinets adjacent
to each side of the bed. The cabinet’s tops have a white sculpture on each. The
cabinet to the right also has a cage. The bed has a black case with a handle,
next to it a broken train track with a train car. The interior also holds a red
rose. One key item beside the room
itself is the very large mirror at the end of the bed. Each piece in this
installation leads to the next piece and all have meaning.
The
child’s room and its pieces represent,” Memories of time, Faraway memories,
fragmented memories, and good memories.”
This was stated by Louise Bourgeois in the film. The hourglasses
and bolts of thread signify time increments. The pieces are a play on words one
might think a string of time and the sands of time. The diverseness of the
sizes is to show the different states and kinds of memories that develop from
childhood to adulthood and also parenthood to childhood. It also could
represent the child growing up and aging into adulthood. The color red flows throughout the piece and
connects the rooms.
In
the parent’s room, the red bedspread brings the presence of pain and disruption
to childhood by the broken train track with a caboose. The mirror at the end of
the bed is a telling piece in the room. Looking into the oval mirror and moving
around the room everything in the room becomes distorted. This is a representation
of memories and how they are distorted from childhood to parenthood. Things
change in different angles of the mirror-like memories change in your mind. The
last detail in the room was one single long stem red rose. Louise Bourgeois stated,” This was because she never
promised her children a rose garden.” This piece The Red Room was an
insight into Louise Bourgeoises’ life.
The
Red Room was a reflection of parenthood, childhood, memories,
and time-lapses. Louise Bourgeoises works like The Red Room intertwine
with her life story. This installation
can be broken down and described in many ways, but to capture the concepts and
meaning of the pieces we must include the life of the artist and statements
from the artist. This helps us as the viewer to bring the true meaning of The
Red Room to light.
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