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.
The Blind Leading the Blind
1949
Louise Bourgeois
1911-2010
American
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Wood and pigment
Overall: 67 1/8 × 72 × 12 1/2 inches (170.5 × 182.9 × 31.8 cm)
Sculpture
Contemporary Art after 1950
Founders Society Purchase, Mr. and Mrs. Walter Buhl Ford, II Fund
79.2
Restricted
Markings
Signed, initialed at top right: L B.
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 pageExhibition 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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Anderson, W. "American Sculpture in the Fifties." Artforum 5, no. 10 (Summer 1967): p. 65 (ill.).
Lippard, L. "Louise Bourgeois: From the Inside Out." Artforum 13 (March 1975): pp. 27-29 (ill.).
Anderson, W. American Sculpture in Process: 1930/1970. Boston, 1975, pp. 93-95 (ill.).
Two Hundred Years of American Sculpture. Exh. cat., Whitney Museum of Art. New York 1976, pp. 261-262 (pl. 50), (fig. 251).
Bloch, S. "An Interview with Louise Bourgeois." Art Journal 35, no. 10 (Summer 1976): pp. 370-372 (ill.).
Bulletin of the DIA 59, no. 1 (Spring 1981): pp. 24-29 (ill.).
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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.
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