Summary
Sculptress is one in a portfolio of fourteen drypoint etchings collectively titled Autobiographical Series. It depicts the artist holding a large anthropormorphic object on a table on which are a cup and saucer. Her hairstyle and the line of her leg visible through her skirt suggest that this is an image of a much younger Louise. Bourgeois began making sculptures after the birth of her sons in the early 1940s, creating a series of Personnages (1947-9). These are totemic wooden sculptures representing the people she had left behind in France on moving to New York in 1938 with her husband, the American art historian Robert Goldwater (1907-73). A possible earlier title for this print was Spoon Mirror, suggesting that the face on the object held by the sculptress is her own, reflected back to her through the activity of making art. The cup and saucer and the elegant base of the round table hint that she may be in a domestic environment, while the bulging forms on the floor which conceal her feet sugggest that she is in an imaginary world… (read more)
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