Saturday 18 August 2012

'A merging of Male and Female'


''There has always been sexual suggestiveness in my work. Sometimes I am totally concerned with female shapes - clusters of breasts like clouds - but often I merge the imagery - phallic breasts, male and female, active and passive. This marble sculpture - my Femme Cocteau - embodies the polarity of woman, the destructive and the seductive. Why do women become hatchet women? They were not born that way. They were made that way out of fear. In the Femme Cocteau, the woman turns into a blade, she is defensive. She identifies with the penis to defend herself. 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. There is a problem stemming from childhood and from lack of sensible, sympathetic education. When I was young, sex was talked of as a dangerous thing; sexuality was forbidden. It is important to show girls that it is natural to be sexual and that men also can feel helpless and vulnerable. When I was at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, we had a nude male model. One day he looked around and saw a woman student and suddenly he had an erection. I was shocked - then I thought, what a fantastic thing, to reveal your vulnerability, to be so publicly exposed. We are all vulnerable in some way, and we are all male-female.''

- Louise Bourgeois


2 comments:

  1. To be vulnerable is to live Wholeheartedly. Lovely post here, thank you for sharing...

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  2. Thanks Tehan, thank you for reading :)

    ReplyDelete