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Décontractée

Louise Bourgeois

Contemporary Art

Throughout her career, Louise Bourgeois created biomorphic abstractions. In her work, fragmented body parts become phantom representations of her memories and experiences, and she often employed roughly finished marble blocks with exquisitely carved figurative elements growing from the stone mass. The psychological and the art historical mix seamlessly in the artist’s carvings. Here, the hard work of chiseling marble renders two recumbent hands, loosely relaxed on a monumental pedestal seemingly constructed for some more heroic purpose. Maintaining her own unheralded legacy for decades, and driven largely by an outcry by women supporters in the art world, Bourgeois had her first museum retrospective in 1982, after more than forty-five years as a practicing artist.
MEDIUM Pink marble and steel base
DATES 1990
DIMENSIONS 28 1/2 x 36 x 23 in. (72.4 x 91.4 x 58.4 cm) with steel supports: 1132 lb. (513.47kg)  (show scale)
SIGNATURE Signed: "L.B. 90"
COLLECTIONS Contemporary Art
ACCESSION NUMBER 1994.124a-c
CREDIT LINE Purchased with funds given by Harry Kahn, Mrs. Carl L.Selden, the David H. Cogan Foundation, Inc., Contemporary Art Council, gift of Edward A. Bragaline, by exchange, and Mary Smith Dorward Fund
PROVENANCE By 1991, acquired from the artist by Robert Miller Gallery, New York, NY; 1994, purchased from Robert Miller Gallery by the Brooklyn Museum.
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MUSEUM LOCATION This item is not on view
CAPTION Louise Bourgeois (French–American, 1911–2010). Décontractée, 1990. Pink marble and steel base, 28 1/2 x 36 x 23 in. (72.4 x 91.4 x 58.4 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Purchased with funds given by Harry Kahn, Mrs. Carl L.Selden, the David H. Cogan Foundation, Inc., Contemporary Art Council, gift of Edward A. Bragaline, by exchange, and Mary Smith Dorward Fund, 1994.124a-c. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 1994.124_SL1.jpg)
IMAGE overall, 1994.124_SL1.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph
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