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拍品專文
“I am not what I am, I am what I do with my hands”—Louise Bourgeois
Executed at the turn of the millennium, Louise Bourgeois was undoubtedly reflecting on her past as she gently carved the present work. Now in her 90th year, having lived through an extraordinary century of artistic and social upheaval, the personal changes she had experienced were immense. Tinged with memories of her childhood, and informed by her role as a wife, mother and one of the world’s most institutionally celebrated artists, Untitled weaves together a singular visual idiom unlike any other. Not seen in public since it was executed, this set of sculpted hands was created from a single piece of hand-hewn pink marble. In it, Bourgeois merges the maternal with the surreal, forming as she often did a completely unique rendition of the human body. Signifying their importance in her oeuvre, other examples of Bourgeois’ pink marble hands can be found in two of America’s most important museum collections: Décontractée (1990) in the Brooklyn Museum of Art and Untitled (no. 2) in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
The supple appearance and tender presentation of Untitled are extremely impressive in consideration of the solidity of its medium. In practice alone, this work acts as testament to Bourgeois’s mastery over marble. The artist first began working with the canonical medium as early as the 1960s, when she created Femme Cocteau (Knife Woman) (c. 1969-70), an abstracted marble form of a female nude, pointed at one end as if transformed into a blade. In that same decade, Bourgeois had traveled to Pietrasanta in Italy to visit the quarries where Michelangelo sourced his marble. It sparked a long-running fascination with the medium. It was in the 1980s, however, that marble began to play a central role in Bourgeois’s oeuvre. In preparation for her 1982 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the artist procured a large new studio space in Brooklyn, which allowed her work to expand on an increasingly larger and more complex scale. Travelling again to Pietrasanta in 1981 to source from the quarries in Carrara, she dove intensely into creating with this hallowed stone.
Bourgeois preferred pink marble primarily because of its uncanny resemblance to flesh, but also for its alluring, feminine presence. In a 1993 interview conducted by the artist Pat Steir for Artforum, Bourgeois observed, “The marble in many of my recent pieces relates to flesh. It is very difficult to get pink marble. It’s called portugalo.... So, this marble is very special” (L. Bourgeois, quoted in “Mortal Elements: Pat Steir Talks with Louise Bourgeois,” Artforum, Summer 1993, p. 127). Bourgeois’s emphasis on its use for the representation of hands quite deliberately recalls the work of Auguste Rodin, whose The Hand of God (ca. 1907) so brilliantly mimicked the divine practice of creating life from elemental forms. At the beginning of her artistic career in the 1930s. Bourgeois had studied with one of Rodin’s assistants, Charles Despiau, in Paris.
Executed towards the end of her life however, the present work reflects on a life (and a historic Century) of female creation. For centuries prior, marble had been used to sculpt heroic figures – and though these subjects were occasionally women, from Venus to Mary Magdalene, those likenesses were in the vast majority created by men. Here, Bourgeois returns artistic agency to women - honoring en-masse the hands of all mothers and all women artists. These are the hands that bring forth creation for us to appreciate. In a very profound sense, the work is also very autobiographical. In the creation of Untitled, Bourgeois began by working with her long-time assistant, Jerry Gorovoy, to take photographs of her own hands. Sometimes the compositions were loose and tender, and in others their embraces were tense and fierce. Bourgeois was given her first museum retrospective late in her life in 1982. This was in a great deal thanks to the championing of her work by other great female figures in the art world from Lucy Lippard to Linda Nochlin and Mary Stevens. In Untitled, she can be seen to thank these influential figures too.
Executed at the turn of the millennium, Louise Bourgeois was undoubtedly reflecting on her past as she gently carved the present work. Now in her 90th year, having lived through an extraordinary century of artistic and social upheaval, the personal changes she had experienced were immense. Tinged with memories of her childhood, and informed by her role as a wife, mother and one of the world’s most institutionally celebrated artists, Untitled weaves together a singular visual idiom unlike any other. Not seen in public since it was executed, this set of sculpted hands was created from a single piece of hand-hewn pink marble. In it, Bourgeois merges the maternal with the surreal, forming as she often did a completely unique rendition of the human body. Signifying their importance in her oeuvre, other examples of Bourgeois’ pink marble hands can be found in two of America’s most important museum collections: Décontractée (1990) in the Brooklyn Museum of Art and Untitled (no. 2) in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
The supple appearance and tender presentation of Untitled are extremely impressive in consideration of the solidity of its medium. In practice alone, this work acts as testament to Bourgeois’s mastery over marble. The artist first began working with the canonical medium as early as the 1960s, when she created Femme Cocteau (Knife Woman) (c. 1969-70), an abstracted marble form of a female nude, pointed at one end as if transformed into a blade. In that same decade, Bourgeois had traveled to Pietrasanta in Italy to visit the quarries where Michelangelo sourced his marble. It sparked a long-running fascination with the medium. It was in the 1980s, however, that marble began to play a central role in Bourgeois’s oeuvre. In preparation for her 1982 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the artist procured a large new studio space in Brooklyn, which allowed her work to expand on an increasingly larger and more complex scale. Travelling again to Pietrasanta in 1981 to source from the quarries in Carrara, she dove intensely into creating with this hallowed stone.
Bourgeois preferred pink marble primarily because of its uncanny resemblance to flesh, but also for its alluring, feminine presence. In a 1993 interview conducted by the artist Pat Steir for Artforum, Bourgeois observed, “The marble in many of my recent pieces relates to flesh. It is very difficult to get pink marble. It’s called portugalo.... So, this marble is very special” (L. Bourgeois, quoted in “Mortal Elements: Pat Steir Talks with Louise Bourgeois,” Artforum, Summer 1993, p. 127). Bourgeois’s emphasis on its use for the representation of hands quite deliberately recalls the work of Auguste Rodin, whose The Hand of God (ca. 1907) so brilliantly mimicked the divine practice of creating life from elemental forms. At the beginning of her artistic career in the 1930s. Bourgeois had studied with one of Rodin’s assistants, Charles Despiau, in Paris.
Executed towards the end of her life however, the present work reflects on a life (and a historic Century) of female creation. For centuries prior, marble had been used to sculpt heroic figures – and though these subjects were occasionally women, from Venus to Mary Magdalene, those likenesses were in the vast majority created by men. Here, Bourgeois returns artistic agency to women - honoring en-masse the hands of all mothers and all women artists. These are the hands that bring forth creation for us to appreciate. In a very profound sense, the work is also very autobiographical. In the creation of Untitled, Bourgeois began by working with her long-time assistant, Jerry Gorovoy, to take photographs of her own hands. Sometimes the compositions were loose and tender, and in others their embraces were tense and fierce. Bourgeois was given her first museum retrospective late in her life in 1982. This was in a great deal thanks to the championing of her work by other great female figures in the art world from Lucy Lippard to Linda Nochlin and Mary Stevens. In Untitled, she can be seen to thank these influential figures too.