Philip Larratt-Smith introduces ‘The Three Graces’ by Louise Bourgeois

Philip Larratt-Smith discusses Louise Bourgeois’s sculpture ‘The Three Graces’ (1947). A poignant example from the artist’s seminal series of iconic works entitled ‘Personage’ created between 1945 and 1955, these totemic forms were intended to serve as both physical and emotional ‘surrogates’ for the family and the home that the emigre artist had left behind in occupied France. Philip Larratt-Smith is a writer and curator based in New York, and was Bourgeois’s literary archivist from 2002 – 2010. Larratt-Smith is currently working on a publication of the psychoanalytical writings of Louise Bourgeois to be published by Princeton University Press in 2020.