Bourgeois

Bourgeois, Léon, 1851-1925, French statesman and social philosopher. He held cabinet posts, notably the premiership (1895-96) and was a delegate to the first and second Hague peace conferences and a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague. One of the earliest proponents of the League of Nations, he headed the French delegation in the League. In 1920 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. His influential book, Solidarité (1896), advocated the use of public authority to achieve the solidarity increasingly necessary within and among nations.

Bourgeois, Louise, 1911-, French-American sculptor, b. Paris. She married the art historian Robert Goldwater in 1938, emigrated to the United States, and became a citizen. Her semiabstract sculpture employs many media, including wood, stone, plaster, metal, and latex, and has since the 1980s included installations encompassing room-sized environments. Characterized by organic forms, her sculpture is extremely personal, sensual, and symbolic, often dealing with female identity and sexuality. She has also created a variety of paintings, drawings, prints, and, beginning in the 1990s, textile works. In addition, she is known for her highly personal and often autobiographical writings. Virtually ignored for decades, Bourgeois was finally recognized in the 1980s and 90s and has influenced many women artists. Her work is in various museum collections, e.g., New York's Whitney Museum and Museum of Modern Art, which held a 1982 retrospective of her work, as did the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia, in 2001.

Drama in which the main characters are ordinary people. This form of tragedy contrasts with Classical tragedy, in which the main characters are of royal or aristocratic rank. An early domestic tragedy, A Warning for Faire Women (1599), deals with the murder of a merchant by his wife. The form became popular in the mid-18th century and reached its maturity in the 19th-century bourgeois tragedies of Henrik Ibsen. Gerhart Hauptmann, Eugene O'Neill, and Arthur Miller wrote important 20th-century domestic tragedies.

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(born Dec. 25, 1911, Paris, Fr.) French-born U.S. sculptor. She studied briefly with Fernand Léger and initially worked as a painter and engraver. In the late 1940s, after moving to New York City with her American husband, she turned to sculpture. She achieved recognition in the 1950s with wooden constructions painted uniformly black or white. She also worked in marble, plaster, latex, and glass. Though her works are abstract, they are suggestive of the human figure and express themes of betrayal, anxiety, and loneliness.

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(born Dec. 25, 1911, Paris, Fr.) French-born U.S. sculptor. She studied briefly with Fernand Léger and initially worked as a painter and engraver. In the late 1940s, after moving to New York City with her American husband, she turned to sculpture. She achieved recognition in the 1950s with wooden constructions painted uniformly black or white. She also worked in marble, plaster, latex, and glass. Though her works are abstract, they are suggestive of the human figure and express themes of betrayal, anxiety, and loneliness.

Learn more about Bourgeois, Louise with a free trial on Britannica.com.

Francs-Bourgeois's street is one of the longer and the most interesting of the le Marais district in Paris, France.

Starting near Centre Georges Pompidou (rue Rambuteau), it is today a trendy street extremely appreciated for all the fashion stores. France traditionally has Sunday as a day of rest but Rue des Francs-Bourgeois is one of the few streets that is open on a Sunday. As such a street many people come to brunch and walk there at the end of the week. It is impossible to miss it if you visit le Marais.There are still beautiful buildings, several hotels from past centuries in particular. Hôtel Carnavalet, Lamoignon, Sandreville, d'Albret, d'Alméras, Poussepin, de Coulanges, Hérouet, de Jaucourt, de Fontenay, de Breteuil and de Soubise are some of them.

Hotel Carnavalet houses the museum of the history of Paris.

History

Years ago, this street was called rue des Poulies. But, in 1415, a man called le Mazurier offered to the grand Prieur of France a huge private mansion with 24 bedrooms to receive 48 poor people. These people were so poor they didn't pay the taxes of the city and were called francs-bourgeois. That is the origin of the street's name.

In 1868 this street had been joined with rue neuve Saint-Catherine and rue du Paradis au Marais.