Couple IV 1997

Louise Bourgeois made this sculpture, Couple IV, out of fabric and wood. She made these forms, these bodies, and staged them in a vitrine - it's such a strange tableau! One of the most arresting things is this dark fabric - dense, almost velvety - in contrast to the pale, aged shoe on the figure's leg. It's a juxtaposition of the organic and the constructed, the soft and the hard. The embrace of these dark forms is so suggestive. Is it an embrace of love or struggle, or perhaps both? Bourgeois has a way of making materials speak of vulnerability and resilience simultaneously. You could almost see some parallels with the work of Eva Hesse, in that both artists were using unconventional materials in ways that challenge traditional notions of sculpture. What remains for both is a potent combination of fragility, strength, and ambiguity.