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Description: B. 1911
NATURE STUDY

measurements
30 x 19 x 15 in. 76.2 x 48.2 x 38.1 cm.

alternate measurements
stainless steel base: 41 x 21 3/4 x 21 3/4 in. 104.1 x 55.2 x 55.2 cm.

inscribed with initials and numbered 2/3

red wax over plaster

Executed in 1984, this is one of an edition of 3 with one artist's proof. There is also a bronze version, cast in 1984, in an edition of 6 with one artist's proof.

PROVENANCE

Galerie Xavier Hufkens, Brussels
Acquired by the present owner from the above in 1997

EXHIBITED

New York, Gagosian Gallery, 1995 Yamantaka Donation; benefit exhibition for Tibet House, February - March 1995 (another cast)
Paris, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Louise Bourgeois: Sculptures, Environments, Dessins 1938-1995, June - October 1995, p. 152, illustrated
Seville, Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo, Louise Bourgeois, February - May 1996
Brussels, Xavier Hufkens Gallery, Louise Bourgeois, December 1996 - February 1997
Philadelphia, Locks Gallery, Louise Bourgeois, March - April 1997 (another cast)

LITERATURE

Alain Kirili, "The Passion for Sculpture - A Conversation with Louise Bourgeois", Arts, vol. 63, no. 7, March 1989, pp. 68-75, illustrated on the cover
Felix Zdenek, Louise Bourgeois Der Ort des Gedächtnisses: Skulpturen, Environments und Zeichnungen 1946-1995, Hamburg, 1996, p. 144, illustrated
Exh. Cat., Milan, Fondazione Prada, Louise Bourgeois: Blue Days and Pink Days, May - July 1997, pp. 174 & 175, illustrated

NOTE

In 1994, the artist executed a unique pink marble version of Nature Study in a slightly larger size (34 1/2 x 17 1/2 x 15 inches). In 1996, smaller versions were executed in gold porcelain (edition of 2 with 2 artist's proofs) and in porcelain biscuit (edition of 6 with 2 artist's proofs). In 2000, a rubber version of various colors was executed with the same dimensions as the wax version, in an edition of 6 with one artist's proof (one in hot pink, three in mauve and three in blue).

NATURE STUDY is a self portrait. The multiple breasts represent the fact that I had to protect my husband and three sons. The breasts are the nurturing mother which hover over the phallus. The phallus is a subject of my tenderness. It's about vulnerability and protection. After all, I lived with four men, with my husband and three sons. I was the protector. I was also the protector of my brother; he knew it, acknowledged it, and used it. Though I feel protective of the phallus, it does not mean I am not afraid of it. The claws represent the protecting mother who defends what she loves. -- Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bourgeois' long career has been dominated by her relentless effort to penetrate the shell protecting her unconscious in order to unearth and ultimately confront some of the deeply repressed issues which conditioned her youth. Echoing this introspective archaeology is Bourgeois' recurrent return to some of the mythical figures which lie at the origin of our collective consciousness. Here with Nature Study, she is inspired by the Throne of a Priestess, a large marble sphinx by the eighteenth-century Franzoni which she once saw at the Louvre in Paris.

By amputating the creature's head and arms in Nature Study, Bourgeois deliberately rejects the sphinx's physical propriety for which it was traditionally praised throughout art history in order to concentrate on the notorious and obscure sexuality of the mythical creature. Half beast, half human, but also half male and half female, Nature Study, perhaps more than any other work by the artist, powerfully incarnates the antagonistic but at the same time complementary nature of both genders, to which the artist constantly refers in her interviews. In Nature Study it seems as though the lumpish protuberances, a distinctive allusion to breasts, have had to multiply themselves in order to compensate and appease the slightly menacing phallus. This double play epitomized by the sphinx's simultaneously nurturing and aggressive nature is echoed by the red colour of the sculpture which often stands for both love and aggression.