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Louise Bourgeois |
Louise Bourgeois has created a variety of works in a series that she calls "Nature Studies." These works range from strange hermaphroditic animals to disembodied body parts. She is drawn to body parts that are especially vulnerable, such as eyes. Each work in the series evokes a different mood, partially through the material used. She chose pink marble for this example not only because it recalls a flesh tone, but also because it is a color that she finds seductive and feminine. Bourgeois worked the surface to create multiple indentations that represent, for her, life’s difficulties and their resolutions.
The repeated use of eyes in Bourgeois’s work underscores her belief in the validity and importance of the theme. She believes eyes are extremely significant. As she said, "It has to do…with the power of communication established by the eyes, very specially in the case of flirtatious eyes. You might say that there is an eye language that has nothing to do with body language…it has to do with a language of sympathy….It is completely mysterious and completely reliable….It’s terribly important since most communication is completely untrue." Eye language is entirely separate from body language or verbal expression because it is so honest and difficult to control. Eyes can give away true feelings and thus must be kept under control at all times. In this piece, the white marble "eyeballs" are not connected to the pink slab. If the work were lifted, they would roll away. For the artist, this refers to the potential of losing control of one’s emotions when communicating through eye contact. A loss of control could lead a person to become trapped, just as the white eyeballs are trapped in the pink marble "face."
— Mariann Smith