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Artist or Maker: Louise Bourgeois (b. 1911)

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Description: Fillette (Sweeter Version)

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Provenance: Acquired from the artist by the present owner

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Exhibited: New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, The American Century: Art and Culture, 1950-2000, September 1999-February 2001, p. 183, no. 298 (the unique cast illustrated in color, another example exhibited).
Madrid, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Louise Bourgeois: Architecture and Memory, November 1999-February 2000, no. 40 (illustrated in color, another example exhibited).
Kyungki-do, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Louise Bourgeois: The Space of Memory, September-November 2000, pl. 32 (illustrated, another example exhibited).
Kunsthaus Zurich; Kunsthalle Hamburg and Prague, Rudolfinum, Hypermental--Rampant Reality, 1950-2000: From Dali to Koons, November 2000-May 2001, p. 160 (illustrated in color, another example exhibited).
St. Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum; Helsinki City Art Museum; Stockholm, Kulturhuset; Oslo, Museet for Samtidskunst and Humlebaek, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Louise Bourgeois at the Hermitage, October 2001-December 2002, p. 50 (illustrated in color, another example exhibited).
New York, Zwirner & Wirth, The Proper Meaning, November 2001-January 2002.
Kunsthaus Bregenz, Louise Bourgeois: Drawings and Sculpture (July-September 2002), p. 74 (illustrated, another example exhibited). Warsaw, Zacheta Gallery of Art, Louise Bourgeois: Geometry of Desire, January-February 1993, p. 61 (illustrated, another example exhibited).
Beacon, Dia Center for the Arts, Louise Bourgeois Installation at Inauguration of Dia:Beacon, May 2003-present).
Berlin, Akademie der Künste, Louise Bourgeois: Intimate Abstractions, June-July 2003.

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Published: M.-L. Bernadac, Louise Bourgeois, Paris, 1996, p. 79 (another example illustrated).
"Exhibition and Theme: Louis Bourgeois," The Art Magazine Wolgan Misool, September 2000, pp. 98-105 (another example illustrated).
R. Storr, et al., Louise Bourgeois, London, 2003, p. 72 (another example illustrated).
L. Cooke and M. Govan, Dia:Beacon, New York, 2003.
P. E. Tojner and P. Vending, Louise Bourgeois: Life as Art, exh. cat., Humlebaek, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2003, p. 14 (another example illustrated).

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Notes: Robert Mapplethorpe, Louise Bourgeois, 1982 c The Estate of Robert Mapplethorpe

"The unconscious is something which is volcanic in tone and yet you cannot do anything about it. You had better be its friend, or accept it, or love it if you can, because it might get the better of you. You never know." Louise Bourgeois

Eroticism has always been at the heart of Louise Bourgeois's oeuvre. From her very earliest sculptures in wood from the 1940's, her work has been a combination of abstracted, sexually charged figuration, filtered through her personal experiences. In the 1940's, the artist created a series of rigidly phallic sculptures, that often contained hollows or orifices referencing female sexuality. One of the artist's most notorious and iconic sculptures, Fillette grows out of these early works and in many ways help point towards the direction that her future sculpture would follow--hanging by a wire, its presentation, as well as its title, gives the work a narrative quality, a quality that the artist will develop further in her "Cell" installations. The original Fillette dates from 1968 and is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art--Fillette (Sweeter Version) is a later interpretation of the theme.

Fillette's blatant, unabashed form eschewed abstraction for a more direct statement, alternatively disturbing, hilarious and mischievous. Fillette was created in the context of the 1960's when issues of feminism were raging--exhibiting such a work was a daring political as well as aesthetic statement. Such fearlessness has made the artist a model for a generation of artists of both sexes. When Fillette was first exhibited, a critic chided Bourgeois for a lack of originality and for aligning "herself with those women artists who paint males as sex objects, reversing the traditional procedure. Sex used like this is still iconography, however, no instinct" (L. Alloway, as quoted in Louise Bourgeois, New York, 1982, p. 27).

Bourgeois has often been associated with various movements but has continually reinvented herself throughout her career. Her earliest work was seen as part of Abstract Expressionism, whereas her 1960's works is often seen in the context of the "Post-Minimalist" group of artists like Eva Hesse. Indeed, like Hesse, Bourgeois worked with unconventional materials, such as the latex and plastic that gives Fillette its deliciously flesh-like exterior. The latex is stretched over the plaster core like a giant prophylactic, full of lumps and bumps that add to its disturbing, rough-and-ready quality. Hesse and Bourgeois also shared an interest in taking sculpture off of pedestals and walls and aggressively moving them into the viewer's space.

Provocatively titled Fillette, which means "little girl" in English, Bourgeois cultivated the works duality. "Janus...is a reference to the kind of polarity we represent...The polarity I experience is a drive toward extreme violence and revolt...and a retiring, I wouldn't say passivity...but a need for peace, a complete peace with the self, with others, and with the environment" (L. Bourgeois, ibid, p. 75). It can alternatively be read as a female torso with rounded breasts, as well as a cock and balls. Clearly related to Brancusi's equally daring Princess X (1915-1916), it is part of a series Bourgeois executed that appear to use the Venus of Willendorf sculpture as its inspiration, with its lumpen masses and fertility-goddess proportions. "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" (Ibid, p. 27).


Louise Bourgeois, Sleep II, 1967 c Louise Bourgeois/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Louise Bourgeois, Le Regard, 1966 c Louise Bourgeois/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Louise Bourgeois, Fillette, 1966 Museum of Modern Art, New York c Louise Bourgeois/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Francis Bacon, Painting, 1946 Museum of Modern Art, New York

Constantin Brancusi, Princess X, 1915-16