"The sky, the building, and the house, knew each other and approved of each other."

Louise Bourgeois



Louise Bourgeois, Femme Maison, State 2,
1984 [1947]. Image via Moma.


"I consider this perfect... it brings the personal together with the environment... it is a symbiosis of one with the universe... it is a kind of acceptance." The figure "is serene... it doesn't mind." But Bourgeois added, "There is a sexual loneliness. She is dignified, but she is alone... she has no companion. The little hand is trying to call for help. She is not sexual at all. Her head does not know that she is naked. She has no hair or bosom... they are occupied by work."*


She does not know that she is half naked, and she does not know that she is trying to hide. That is to say, she is totally self-defeating because she shows herself at the very moment that she thinks she’s hiding.**


Her works titled Femme Maison... exemplify her gendered depiction of the realities of a young mother confined at home with inescapable responsibilities.***


* Quote cited in Wye, Deborah and Carol Smith. "The Prints of Louise Bourgeois." New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1994, p. 148. Via MoMA.

** Via TATE.

*** Wye, Deborah. Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait: Prints, Books, and the Creative Process. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2017: 37.



The "Phantom Pencil Seam Nylons" ad presents another set of spare parts against a romantic landscape. Some people have heard of "Ideas with legs," but everybody today has been brought up on pictures like these, which would rather appear to be "legs with ideas." Legs today have been indoctrinated. They are self-conscious. They speak. They have huge audiences. They are taken on dates. And in varying degrees the ad agencies have extended this specialist treatment to every other segment of the feminine anatomy. [...] Ads like these not only express but also encourage that strange dissociation of sex not only from the human person but even from the unity of the body.****


**** McLuhan, Marshall. "The Mechanical Bride." In Essential McLuhan, Eds. Eric McLuhan and Frank Zingrone. Concord, Ontario: House of Anansi Press Limited, 1995: 24-25.