Femme Maison 1994

This is Louise Bourgeois’ ‘Femme Maison’, and looking at it now, I can't help but think about what it feels like to live inside our own heads. Here, the smooth marble seems to both reveal and conceal. A woman's body—or parts of her—emerges from a house, or is it that the house is consuming her? I feel the vulnerability of exposure, and the simultaneous comfort of enclosure. I wonder what Bourgeois was thinking about, and the way she plays with inside/outside, safety/danger, attraction/repulsion. The tension, almost comical, is what gets me. Her work reminds me a little of Philip Guston and his later paintings, like he was saying "yes, it's terrible, but it's also me." Artists are constantly talking to each other and saying “me too.” It’s an act of communion.