Lost Art Techniques - Louise Bourgeois

" For me, sculpture is the body. My body is the sculpture."
-Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bourgeois was born on December 25, 1911 in Paris to Josephine Fauriaux and Louis Bourgeois. While she studied painting throughout the 1930s, it was largely her study of mathematics and geometry at the Sorbonne that pointed her to sculpture. She was fascinated by the rules of solid geometry and the intricate relationships created by the positioning of elements in space. "My sculpture allows me to re-experience the fear, to give it physicality, so I am able to hack away at it. Fear becomes a manageable reality. Sculpture allows me to reexperience the past, to see the past in its objective,realistic proportion."

Bourgeois's work is largely derived from her personal history and experience as a woman: daughter, wife, and mother.

Though reminiscent of ancient representations of mythical winged demigods, this bronze figure appears to have been fractured and reconstructed from its disparate parts. While the individual features of the sphinx like figure correspond to natural shapes, the compounded effect of this imposition of both human and animal body parts suggests a supernatural creature, and anthropomorphic goddess. This piece expresses Bourgeois's continued fascination with the manipulation of the recognizable landscapes of our bodies. Extending her mannerist strategy of elongation and distortion, this sculpture is complex and unpredictable in its sudden shifts in anatomy. Neither completely human, nor totally animal in its physiognomy, it displays forms that are concerned with the physicality of flesh.

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Nature Study - Bronze 1984

Bronze, polished patina 30x19x15 inches Steel base 41x15x20in.
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York