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[[image]]
Louise Bourgeois, Resin Eight, 1965, resin over hemp. 
(Photo: Peter Moore)

disadvantage unless one thinks in terms of logical progression, which she certainly does not. Lovingly and fearfully woven and unwound from her own body and her own needs, her art's sensuality can be so strong that it overwhelms all other considerations. Like many women, she identifies surfaces with her skin - it can be the cloth in Cumulous, or a thin layer of peeling latex over bulbous plaster, or the heavier folds in Fillette, or a glowing flow of dark resin totally immersing underlying forms. Within the art (as, one suspects, within the artist) form and the formless are locked in constant combat. The outcome is an unusually exposed demonstration of the intimate bond between art and its maker. Despite her apparent fragility, Bourgeois is an artist, and a women artist, who has survived almost 40 years of discrimination, struggle, intermittent success and neglect, in New York's gladiatorial art arenas. The tensions which make her work unique are forged between just those poles of tenacity and vulnerability. 

1. All questions not otherwise sourced are from the artists in conversation with the author, fall, 1974.
2. Daniel Robbins, "Sculptures by Louis Bourgeois," Art International, October 20, 1965. 
3.From notes written by the artist in response to questions posed by William Rubin in preparation for an article on Bourgeois. 
4. Some of these latex pieces from the mid-1960's were shown at the Fischbach Gallery in the "Eccentric Abstration" show, September, 1966; with Bruce Nauman's early latex work, also in the show, they suggested possibilities later expanded as "antifoam."
5.William S. Rubin, "Some Reflections Prompted by the Recent Work of Louise Bourgeois,Art International, April, 1969, pp. 17-20.
6.Quoted in Dorthy Seiberling, "The Female View of Erotica," New York Magazine, February 11, 1974.
7.Ibid
8.Notes for Rubin (see note 3). 
9. Patrice Marandel, "Louise Bourgeois," Art International, December, 1971, pp. 45-48. 

[[image]] 
Louise Bourgeois, End of Softness, 1965, bronze 20". (Photo: Peter Moore.)