The Blind Leading the Blind

1949

Louise Bourgeois American, 1911-2010

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Catalogue Raisonné

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About the Artwork

In this sculpture, a single, angled lintel links the upright elements, which the artist calls "personages"; she uses this abstracted human form as a highly personal totem. Created in her rooftop studio in New York City not long after she left France, this series of sculptures express her loneliness at being a foreigner in a strange city and her fears about her identity as mother, wife, and artist. The Detroit sculpture has six pairs of long, tapered legs, which appear to stand "on tiptoe" when viewed from one vantage point. From another, they are more firmly set on the ground. In either case, their delicate balance suggests an upward, not just forward, movement.

Title The Blind Leading the Blind

Artwork Date 1949

Artist Louise Bourgeois

Life Dates 1911-2010

Nationality Please note: Definitions for nationality may vary significantly, depending on chronology and world events. Some definitions include: Belonging to a people having a common origin based on a geography and/or descent and/or tradition and/or culture and/or religion and/or language, or sharing membership in a legally defined nation. American

Culture Please note: Cultures may be defined by the language, customs, religious beliefs, social norms, and material traits of a group. Unknown

Medium Wood and pigment

Dimensions Overall: 67 1/8 × 72 × 12 1/2 inches (170.5 × 182.9 × 31.8 cm)

Classification Sculpture

Department Contemporary Art after 1950

Credit Founders Society Purchase, Mr. and Mrs. Walter Buhl Ford, II Fund

Accession Number This unique number is assigned to an individual artwork as part of the cataloguing process at the time of entry into the permanent collection. Most frequently, accession numbers begin with the year in which the artwork entered the museum’s holdings. For example, 2008.3 refers to the year of acquisition and notes that it was the 3rd of that year. The DIA has a few additional systems—no longer assigned—that identify specific donors or museum patronage groups. 79.2

Markings

Signed Signed, initialed at top right: L B.

Inscriptions Inscribed, dated at back top: 1949

Provenance

The collection of the artist. 1979-present, purchase by the Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, Michigan, USA)

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Provenance page

Exhibition History

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The exhibition history of a number of objects in our collection only begins after their acquisition by the museum, and may reflect an incomplete record.

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Published References

Two Hundred Years of American Sculpture. Exh. cat., Whitney Museum of Art. New York 1976, pp. 261-262 (ill. pl. 50, fig. 251).

Lippard, L. "Louise Bourgeois: From the Inside Out." ARTFORUM 13 (March 1975): 27-29 (ill.).

Anderson, W. American Sculpture in Process: 1930/1970. Boston, 1975, pp. 93-95 (ill.).

Anderson, W. "American Sculpture in the Fifties." ARTFORUM 5, no. 10 (Summer 1967): 65 (ill.).

Bloch, S. "An Interview with Louise Bourgeois." ART JOURNAL 35, no. 10 (Summer 1976): 370-372 (ill.).

Bulletin of the DIA 59, no. 1 (Spring 1981): 24-29 (ill.).

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Catalogue Raisoneé

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Credit Line for Reproduction

Louise Bourgeois, The Blind Leading the Blind, 1949, wood and pigment. Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society Purchase, Mr. and Mrs. Walter Buhl Ford, II Fund, 79.2.