Louise Bourgeois's homage to Eugenie Grandet

The last time I saw Louise Bourgeois's work at Tate Modern, her retrospective exhibition left me with a lasting impressive of an extraordinary woman artist who had lived through all the avant-garde artistic movements in the 20th century and yet her work had defied tradition and remained individual, inventive and experimental.

Her monumental spider sculpture Maman and what are being shown at the confined space of Maison de Balzac cannot be more different in terms of the scale and approach.  Bourgeois's series of work for this show were dedicated to Eugenie Grandet, the heroine from the 1833 novel by Honore de Balzac who lived under the tyranny of her father and died a spinster.   

Ode to Eugenie Grandet

Portrait of Eugenie Grandet 

Bourgeois, who had a complex relationship with her own father, openly identified with Grandet.  As if to convey the frustration of a woman from realising her own identity, the works leaned towards handicraft - needlework and embroidery that symbolise the feminine role in the society.

The mundane, repetitive routine of Grandet's futile existence is seen through the clock - an element which appears in many of the works shown here.

This is one of the last series of work that Bourgeois made before she died at the age of 98 in 2010.  Her oeuvre includes sculptures and installations on the grandest scale.  Perhaps it was time she felt the need to return to a more intimate level through exploring the life of Eugenie Grandet that paralleled her own.