Abstract Erotic @ The Courtauld, London

Alice Adams, Big Aluminum 2, 1965

This small exhibition at The Courtauld was important on a number of levels. First, the fact that the 1960s work of three women artists, Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, and Alice Adams was exhibited together is always to be appreciated. Following on from that, each of the artists was engaged in practices that appropriated the materials of industrial modernity and pushed them beyond their limits to create sensuous discourses on the body. Moreover, their focus was on the body as  sensed, not touched, desired and desiring without oppression, and sexual without abuse. Put differently the work of Louise Bourgeois, Alice Adams and Eva Hesse takes the intransigence of industrial materials and forms soft, provocative curves marked by rich texture and resonance. 

Installation of Louise Bourgeois sculptures

It was interesting to see the artists using latex and rubber as medium. The material with its elasticity, organic properties was a provocative alternative to the hard edged plastics, steel and other industrial materials that characterised the hard edged masculinity of minimalism in the 1960s. They were also using latex for making artistic sculptures, a material that was at the time, marketed for children's toys and other household goods. Thus, the use of latex enabled the artists to push the language of art in multiple directions.

Louise Bourgeois, Fillette (Sweeter Version), 1968

As mentioned, one of the most striking aspects of all their practices was the exploration of the body through new and then undiscovered approaches. Bourgeois playful forms that embrace many levels of ambiguity were especially provocative. Are pieces such as her well known Fillette male or female? Vulnerable or trapped? Protected or isolated? Bourgeois is mistress of blurring boundaries, including the distinction between the inside and outside of the body, well ahead of the times. In works such as Avenza, I was also reminded me of the Alien mothers eggs in the film series, eggs laid and hatched on her own without a male. In spite of the binding of male and female, there are moments in Bourgeois work where women have the ultimate power. Bourgeois's art is truly transgressive years before the fluidity of gender and sexuality became front and center of the public discourse. 

Louise Bourgeois, Avenza, 1968-69

Eva Hesse's sculptures are radical and transgressive in a different way. If Bourgeois shifts between opposites, Hesse takes us inside the body, to organs and the ooey gooey amorphous stuff that is not conventionally seen. 

Eva Hesse, Inside II, 1967

I was also touched by the intimacy to the works, whether created in fleshy fabrics or harsh modern fabrics such as steel fencing, chains, rope and chicken wire. The shapes and sculpted objects push these industrial materials beyond our understanding of how they were made to be used. Adams' Big Aluminium II made with chain-link fencing is a prime example. Like many of the forms on exhibition in Abstract Erotic, Hesse's creation of an organic form out of inorganic matter is a radical inversion and turning inside out on multiple levels. And yet, works in metals and other industrial fabrics also use the inherent qualities of the materials: malleable, ductile, tensile, tough, and elastic. It is simply that the shapes and objects are not those we associate with these materials. Perhaps it is the multiple levels of unconventionality in the works and the exhibition as a whole that are the most significant elements of this unique exhibition.