Mortise 1950

Louise Bourgeois made this sculpture, "Mortise," using painted wood. Just looking at the image, I can imagine Bourgeois in her studio, handling each of these rectangular blocks, dipping some in vibrant red paint, others in somber gray. It’s like she's building a tower of emotions, where each block is a memory or a feeling stacked carefully on top of another. I'm thinking of artists like Eva Hesse. They're both artists who let their materials speak, and both were amazing sculptors. But Hesse used a more gentle approach. Bourgeois's approach is fierce. The stark contrast between the red and grey blocks, how they jut out and interrupt each other, gives the whole sculpture a raw, unsettled energy. It's like she's not just building something, but also wrestling with something, maybe her demons, her past, or something in her present.