top of page

LOUISE

BOURGEOIS

Louise-Bourgeois-Single-I-1996-fabric.jp
Couple_.jpg

Louise Joséphine Bourgeois was a French-American artist. She explored a variety of themes over the course of her long career including domesticity and the family, sexuality and the body, as well as death and the unconscious. These themes connect to events from her childhood which she considered to be a therapeutic process. In this article I would talk about a couple her works (from many) which is Couple and Couple 1 in term of internal and external from my own perspective. The two figures in couple (2003) are meant to hold on to each other for eternity. The internal part of the figure, which I considered it as the story of the artwork, were instructed by external elements. The aluminium layer and how the work is hanged are what determine how the story is told. In couple 1, The outer layers were made of clothes. One figure is made of fabric associated with more masculine clothing such as blue pinstriped shirt and black flannel. The other figure has more feminine attributes including a lace collar and stuffed pair of black nylon tights. With the same body, the context of each figure was shifted by just the cloth that constructed them. Not just the exterior of the artwork but the environment around itself were also conducting a story along with the layer of clothes. On the notion of the hanging figure, the artist has said:

​

          ‘Horizontality is a desire to give up, to sleep. Verticality is an attempt to escape. Hanging and floating are states of ambivalence.’ (Quoted in Askew and d’Offay 2013, p.48.)

​

The messages that has been spoken through the outer layer of the work is somehow strengthened the inner context.

download.jpeg

CONTACT

-

SOCIAL

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Personal website

<

© 2019 by Kasidith Nuchjalearn (19034005).

bottom of page