id: 162292 accession number: 2002.29 share license status: Copyrighted url: https://clevelandart.org/art/2002.29 updated: 2020-06-18 09:02:17.683000 Blind Man's Buff, 1984. Louise Bourgeois (American, 1911-2010). White marble on wooden base; overall: 92.7 x 88.9 x 63.5 cm (36 1/2 x 35 x 25 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund 2002.29 © The Easton Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY title: Blind Man's Buff title in original language: series: series in original language: creation date: 1984 creation date earliest: 1984 creation date latest: 1984 current location: 229A Contemporary creditline: Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund copyright: © The Easton Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY --- culture: America, 20th century technique: white marble on wooden base department: Contemporary Art collection: CONTEMP - Sculpture type: Sculpture find spot: catalogue raisonne: --- CREATORS * Louise Bourgeois (American, 1911-2010) - artist --- measurements: Overall: 92.7 x 88.9 x 63.5 cm (36 1/2 x 35 x 25 in.) state of the work: edition of the work: support materials: inscriptions: --- CURRENT EXHIBITIONS title: Louise Bourgeois opening date: 2007-10-11T00:00:00 Louise Bourgeois. Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (organizer) (October 11, 2007-January 27, 2008); Centre national d'art et de culture Georges Pompidou, Paris cedex O4, France (March 5-June 2, 2008); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY (June 27-September 28, 2008). title: Double Sexus: Hans Bellmer and Louise Bourgeois opening date: 2011-03-26T00:00:00 Double Sexus: Hans Bellmer and Louise Bourgeois. Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH (organizer) (March 26-August 7, 2011). --- LEGACY EXHIBITIONS * Louise Bourgeois: Sculpture. Robert Miller Gallery, New York (September 11 – October 6, 1984). * Sculpture by Women in the Eighties. University of Pittsburgh Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA (November 7 – December 8, 1985). * Sculpture by Louise Bourgeois. The Taft Museum, Cincinnati, OH (organizer) (May 5 – June 28, 1987); The Art Museum at Florida International University, Miami, FL (October 23, 1987 – January 18, 1988); Laguna Gloria Art Museum, Austin, TX (July 1 – August 28, 1988); Washington University, Gallery of Art, St. Louis, MO (September 18 – October 30, 1988); Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY (September 27 – November, 26 1989). * Louise Bourgeois: A Retrospective Exhibition. Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt, West Germany (organizer) (December 2, 1989 – January 28, 1990); Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, West Germany (February 14 – March 25, 1990); Lyon Musée d’Art Contemporain, Lyon, France (July 5 – August 20, 1990); Fundación Tàpies, Barcelona, Spain (November 6, 1990 – January 6, 1991); Kunstmuseum, Berne, Switzerland (March 7 – May 5, 1991); Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, The Netherlands (May 25 – July 8, 1991). * Louise Bourgeois: Recent Work 1984-1989. Riverside Studios, London (May 2 – June 17, 1990). * Louise Bourgeois: The Locus of Memory, Works 1982-1993. Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY (co-organizer) (April 22 – July 31, 1994); The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C (co-organizer) (September 23, 1994 – January 15, 1995); Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague, Czech Republic (March 15 – May 28, 1995); Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (June 23 – October 8, 1995). --- PROVENANCE Louise Bourgeois [1911-2010], New York, NY, possibly consigned to Robert Miller Gallery, NY date: 1984-? footnotes: citations: (Robert Miller Gallery, New York) date: ?-? footnotes: citations: (Galerie Karsten Greve, Cologne, Germany, 1995, sold to private collector) date: ?-1995 footnotes: citations: Private Collector date: 1995-? footnotes: citations: (Christie's, NY, May, 14, 2002, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) date: ?-2002 footnotes: citations: The Cleveland Museum of Art date: 2002- footnotes: citations: --- fun fact: Historians have made connections between the bulging, rounded forms in Blind Man's Buff and representations of Artemis of Ephesus, the goddess of fertility in Greek mythology, and the Venus of Willendorf, one of the earliest ancient art objects discovered. digital description: Combinations of opposites distinguish the sculptures of Louise Bourgeois. In Blind Man’s Buff, the smooth, opaque surface of the marble contrasts with the rough, porous wood of its base. In addition, the ambiguous, bulbous forms appear both phallic and breast-like, attributes combining both genders. Humor is also a key component in her work, as seen in the title, a variation on “Blind Man’s Bluff,” a child’s game in which one blindfolded person must look for others using only sound and touch. The artist’s alteration of “bluff” to “buff” has a dual meaning. It refers to the method of smoothing, or “buffing” marble, which highlights the rich history of marble sculpture. Also, “in the buff” references the sculpture’s likeness to the nude human body, a factor reinforced by the fabric folds visible at the sculpture’s edges, as if clothing has been cast aside. wall description: Combinations of opposites distinguish the sculptures of Louise Bourgeois. In Blind Man’s Buff, the smooth, opaque surface of the marble contrasts with the rough, porous wood of its base. In addition, the ambiguous, bulbous forms appear both phallic and breast-like, attributes combining both genders. Humor is also a key component in her work, as seen in the title, a variation on “Blind Man’s Bluff,” a child’s game in which one blindfolded person must look for others using only sound and touch. The artist’s alteration of “bluff” to “buff” has a dual meaning. It refers to the method of smoothing, or “buffing” marble, which highlights the rich history of marble sculpture. Also, “in the buff” references the sculpture’s likeness to the nude human body, a factor reinforced by the fabric folds visible at the sculpture’s edges, as if clothing has been cast aside. --- RELATED WORKS --- CITATIONS Cleveland Museum of Art, “Blind Man’s Buff, Rare Sculpture by Modern Master Louise Bourgeois, Acquired for Contemporary Collection,” May 15, 2002, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives. page number: url: https://archive.org/details/cmapr4452 “Calendar.” The Burlington Magazine 144, no. 1197 (December 2002). page number: Reproduced p. 786 url: Bal, Mieke. Louise Bourgeois' Spider: The Architecture of Art-Writing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. page number: Reproduced p. 67; mentioned p. 66 url: Bernadac, Marie-Laure, and Louise Bourgeois. Louise Bourgeois. Paris: Flammarion, 1996. page number: Reproduced p. 106 url: Bernadac, Marie-Laure, and Louise Bourgeois. Louise Bourgeois. Paris: Flammarion, 2006. page number: Reproduced p. 123 url: Bourgeois, Louise, Lynne Cooke, Béatrice Parent, and Suzanne Pagé. Louise Bourgeois; Sculptures, environnements, dessins 1938-1995. Paris: Paris-Musées, 1995. page number: Reproduced p. 161 url: Jahn, Andrea, and Louise Bourgeois. Louise Bourgeois: Subversionen des Körpers : die Kunst der 40er bis 70er Jahre. Berlin: Reimer, 1999. page number: Reproduced p. 202, Fig. 106; mentioned p. 199. url: Bourgeois, Louise, Charlotta Kotik, Terrie Sultan, and Christian Leigh. Louise Bourgeois: The Locus of Memory, Works 1982-1993. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1994. page number: Reproduced p. 90, Plate 5; mentioned p. 56. url: Bourgeois, Louise, and Stuart Morgan. Louise Bourgeois. Cincinnati, Ohio: Taft Museum, 1987. page number: Reproduced p. 34-35. url: Morris, Frances, Paulo Herkenhoff, and Marie-Laure Bernadac. Louise Bourgeois. London: Tate Pub, 2007. page number: Reproduced p. 59, Fig. 42; mentioned pgs. 58 and 60. url: Heartney, Eleanor, Helaine Posner, Nancy Princenthal, and Sue Scott. After the Revolution: Women Who Transformed Contemporary Art. 2013. page number: Reproduced p. 42; mentioned p. 43 url: Gorovoy, Jerry, Louise Bourgeois, Pandora Tabatabai Asbaghi, and Paulo Herkenhoff. Louise Bourgeois: blue days and pink days. Milan: Fondazione Prada, 1997. page number: Reproduced p. 165. url: Storr, Robert, Louise Bourgeois, Paulo Herkenhoff, and Allan Schwartzman. Louise Bourgeois. London: Phaidon Press, 2003. page number: Reproduced and mentioned p. 70. url: Tani, Ellen Y., and Amanda Cachia. Second Sight: The Paradox of Vision in Contemporary Art. Exh. Cat. Brunswick, ME: Bowdoin College Museum of Art, 2018. page number: Reproduced p. 35, Fig. 18; mentioned p. 35-36. url: Christie’s. Post-War and Contemporary. New York: Christie’s, 16 May 2013, Lot 233. page number: Reproduced p. 262. url: Christie’s. Post-War and Contemporary. New York: Christie’s, 14 May 2002, Lot 28. page number: Reproduced p. 82. url: Kim, Tina. Kukje Gallery: 25 Years. Seoul: Kukje Gallery, 2007. page number: Reproduced p. 19. url: Louise Bourgeois: Femme. Exh. Cat. Baltimore, MD: Walters Art Museum, 2006. page number: Reproduced p. 23. url: Bourgeois, Louise. Louise Bourgeois: Recent Work 1984-1989. London: Riverside Studios, 1990. page number: Reproduced p. 28. url: Louise Bourgeois: Sculpture, Drawings and Prints. Exh. Cat. Jena, Germany: Städtischen Museen Jena, 2010. page number: Reproduced p. 18 and 53. url: Bourgeois, Louise, and Xavier Tricot. Un Salon Pour Louise Bourgeois. Oudenburg [Belgium]: Foundation De Elf Lijnen, 2006. page number: Reproduced pgs. 22-23. url: Bourgeois, Louise. Louise Bourgeois: Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo, 25 Mei - 8 Juli 1991. Schaffhausen [Switzerland]: Verlag Photographic AG, 1989. page number: Reproduced pgs. 34 and 151. url: --- IMAGES