Waking nights

There is a longing for resolution in insomnia. A desire to find the key that will unlock the door to sleep; to end the staring, the turning, the pacing; to slow the recurring thoughts that spin with building momentum. This quest for relief is evident in The Insomnia Drawings of Louise Bourgeois.

Bourgeois considers her 220 Insomnia Drawings to be a single work. They were made in the nighttime hours during a particularly severe bout of insomnia that lasted from November 1994 to June 1995. Like much of her work, these drawings are conjured from childhood memories, which resurface here in the form of abstract images infused with an underlying sense of anxiety. Produced during a time of undesired consciousness, they represent a way to resolve and conquer sleeplessness.

Born in Paris in 1911, Bourgeois emigrated to the United States in the 1930s. She is best known as a sculptor, but her works have never been limited by one particular medium, as they incorporate anything from wood to glass, string to rubber. Rendered in ink, gouache, pencil and crayon, The Insomnia Drawings are similarly diverse. But it is the invocations of the past that join this work with her others. Memories find their way into these drawings through recurrent motifs of water, music and plant life. The images that appear from the abstracted designs seem to move, like the objects they suggest, in flowing, undulating and waving patterns. Many of the lines in the drawings form spirals that appear to drift away from or toward the viewer. The effect is like staring at a hypnotist's wheel, a device to lure subjects into a trance or to invoke long-forgotten memories. There are circular forms that interconnect, overlapping in patterns that flash like the spots of light one sees with closed eyes after staring into the light — or like unwanted, lingering memories. There are lines that seem to hang from the top of the page and blow in the breeze, like swinging laundry, or like the gentle rocking that sends a baby into sleep. There are lines that close on one another to form the deep hallways we run through in nightmares; and there are lines that spiral downward into bottomless pits, creating a sense of endless vertigo. Interspersed among the images are fragments of text that are sometimes random and sometimes organized into sentences or poems. These reinforce the idea of art as a personal journal or diary, a mechanism to rid the tired mind of circling demons. Three of the pictures are of clocks whose numbers join together in a circle and register the progression of time moving relentlessly forward with its mocking, tick-tocking march.

These pictures are filled with the anxiety of recurring thoughts and reveal the distress of irresolvable emotion. The repeated patterns of spirals and waves seem to be trying to lure obsessive ideas into peace through a process of self-hypnosis, but these drawings are not calming. Anxiety and the desperate desire to resolve this anxiety seem to chase one another around in circles, hoping for eventual fatigue. The images are filled with agitation. They grasp for peace. They go beyond the quest for sleep, and search for a deeper sensation of psychological well-being.

Jonah Samson Family Medicine Resident St. Michael's Hospital Toronto, Ont.

Figure. Louise Bourgeois (1994–1995). From The Insomnia Drawings, 220 mixed-media works on paper of varying dimensions. Detail shown here: ink, charcoal and pencil on paper, 29.6 cm х 22.8 cm. Daros Collection, courtesy Cheim & Read, New York Photo by: Christopher Burke

Figure. Louise Bourgeois (1994–1995). From The Insomnia Drawings, 220 mixed-media works on paper of varying dimensions. Detail shown here: crayon, pencil and charcoal on paper, 22.7cm х 30.5 cm. Daros Collection, courtesy Cheim & Read, New York Photo by: Christopher Burke