Bourgeois

Louise (1911). French sculptor. Since 1938 she has lived in New York. Much of her work has as its subject the human body. Clothing is considered like a second skin, a symbol of the body itself. A dress is the symbol of an existential condition: for this reason the artist often makes use of clothes in her installations, as in Couple (1996), in which a dummy wearing a men’s shirt towers over another wearing only a necklace. In 1978, for the performance A Banquet/A Fashion Show of Body Parts, she created latex dress-sculptures worn by the artist herself and others. These clothes, provided with bulges similar to a woman’s breasts placed both front and back, were ironical about men and women and invited discussion about ideals of physical beauty.