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Lippard -8

she is a grotesque parody of the Venus of Willendorf (thought by some to have been made by a woman as a fertility charm), lumbering forward, armless, her head replaced by a stake-like point, defending her [[strikethrough]] exposed and [[/strikethrough]] exaggerated voluptuousness. Similarly, the knife-woman (Femme Couteau)--a wrapped and folded marble blade with delicate pudenda exposed--[[strikethrough]] which [[/strikethrough]] "embodies the polarity of woman, the destructive and the seductive.... The woman turns into a blade.... A girl can be terrified of the world. She feels vulnerable because she can be wounded by the penis. So she tries to take on the weapon of the aggressor.7 But when woman becomes aggressive, she becomes terribly afraid. If you are inhabited by needles, stakes and knives, you are very handicapped to be a self-perceptive creature. These women are eternally reaching for a way of becoming women. Tehir anxiety comes from their doubt of being ever able to become receptive. The battle is fought at the terror level which precedes anything sexual."

One of the most pathetic manifestations of such a double image is a small femme pieu of green-brown wax who lies, again legless and armless, like a stranded turtle on her back, breasts and vulva and an abdominal wound exposed to all comers. Bourgeois used this piece as a pincuchion, and the soft form is violated by large and small needles, suggesting some terrible [[strikethrough]] charm [[/strikethrough]] fetish. She too connects the image with sorcery. As a child, she was attached to a furpiece held together by needles. "The needle was so effective and so small that it had a magic quality. You could hurt people and you could make things people liked. Its magic power has never quite vanished. It is partly a way to be appreciated, a desire to please."

Bourgeois makes certain types of work under specific emotioanl conditions. After her husband's death she turned to "aggressive" work--