‘I made a drawing of breasts pressed against each other; there was a double attitude to be like a mother, and to be liked by a mother … the lips kiss like sucking. The whole person becomes a breast that stretches in order to give’ - Louise Bourgeois

Created in 1971, Le Trani Episode is a captivating example of Louise Bourgeois’ sensuous, psychologically-charged sculpture. Two tender, elongated shapes rest together in intimate union, tactile and lustrous in polished, silvered bronze; one has a golden nipple at both ends, creating a dual phallic and breast-like impression. This startling merger of sexual symbols – collapsing such polarities as male and female, penis and breast, soft and hard – is typical of Bourgeois’ work, which takes a deep dive into the fundamental forms of the human psyche.

Continually bringing her past into conversation with the present, many of Bourgeois’ works relate to the close childhood bond she shared with her mother, who died young in 1932: both had suffered difficult relationships with Bourgeois’ philandering father. The artist described her mother as ‘deliberate, clever, patient, soothing, reasonable, dainty, subtle, indispensable, neat, and useful’ (L. Bourgeois, Ode à ma mere, Paris 1995, p. 62). She gave birth to her own first child in 1940. The soft, mammary bodies of Le Trani Episode are fertile with meaning, suggesting a primal image of maternal nurture, sensuality and mutual affection.

As Bourgeois once explained, ‘since I am exclusively concerned, at least consciously, with formal perfection, I allow myself to follow blindly the images that suggest themselves to me. There has always been sexual suggestiveness in my work. 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’ (L. Bourgeois, quoted in D. Wye, Louise Bourgeois, New York 1982, pp. 26-27). Poised at the intersections of sex, life, art and subconscious, works like Le Trani Episodecan be seen as a form of physical autobiography, bringing the ambiguous shapes of an emotional interior into the world.
Post Lot Text
This lot has been imported from outside the EU for sale and placed under the Temporary Admission regime. Import VAT is payable (at 5%) on the hammer price. VAT at 20% will be added to the buyer’s premium but will not be shown separately on the invoice. Please see Conditions of Sale for further information.

Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot. You must pay us an extra amount equal to the resale royalty and we will pay the royalty to the appropriate authority. Please see the Conditions of Sale for further information.