Louise Bourgeois
Femme
Femme
2005 Bronze, silver nitrate patina 14 x 43.2 x 20.3 cm / 5 1/2 x 17 x 8 in
‘There has always been sexual suggestiveness in my work. Sometimes I am totally concerned with female shapes – clusters of breasts like clouds – but I often merge the imagery – phallic breasts, male and female, active and passive. […] We are all vulnerable in some way, and we are all male-female’ [1]
Louise Bourgeois
Born in France in 1911, and working in America from 1938 until her death in 2010, Louise Bourgeois is recognized as one of the most important and influential artists of the twentieth century. For over seven decades, Bourgeois’s creative process was fueled by an introspective reality, often rooted in cathartic re-visitations of early childhood trauma and frank examinations of female sexuality. Articulated by recurrent motifs (including body parts, houses and spiders), personal symbolism and psychological release, the conceptual and stylistic complexity of Bourgeois’s oeuvre – employing a variety of genres, media and materials – plays upon the powers of association, memory, fantasy, and fear.
[1] Louise Bourgeois quoted in “The Female View of Erotica” by Dorothy Seiberling. New York 7, no. 6, (February 11, 1974): 56.
© The Easton Foundation/VAGA at ARS, NY Photo: Mark Setteducati