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Untitled (No. 2)
Louise Bourgeois American
Not on view
Bourgeois’s two hands engaged in an intimate caress sit incongruously on a roughly chiseled, seemingly unfinished base. In the early 1930s Bourgeois studied with Charles Despiau, one of Rodin’s assistants; she may well have learned about Rodin’s marble sculptures of hands from Despiau. Later, in 1967–68, she traveled to Pietrasanta, Italy, where she discovered the same marble quarries from which Michelangelo sourced his material. It was at this point that Bourgeois adopted the medium. As the artist once said of the difficult task of working in marble, "You have to win the shape." Her fight to conquer the block of marble is left visible here.
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