Sublimation 2002

Editor: Here we have Louise Bourgeois's "Sublimation," a mixed-media drawing from 2002. It features these swirling shapes reminiscent of… well, spirals. What immediately strikes me is the contrast between the organic feel of the spirals and the stark, handwritten text. It’s like two separate thoughts occupying the same space. How do you interpret this work? Curator: For me, the spirals immediately evoke a sense of the internal. Bourgeois was so brilliant at externalizing the complex and often turbulent landscape of inner emotion. Imagine these spirals as two distinct wells, maybe representing love, or perhaps rage. "And suddenly there was a clash of voices," she writes... Do you hear that? Editor: I do. The handwritten element, placed away from the spirals, creates an unsettling sense of disconnection. I almost feel a discord. Are these two halves in conflict? Curator: Exactly! Bourgeois often explored the duality within herself, and within the human condition itself. These could be warring desires or contrasting aspects of her identity wrestling for control. Or maybe that voice—or those voices—is/are actually, ultimately, one. One longing so loud it became a clash. Don’t you think longing and voice are linked? What does it mean for an artist to put her own voice out in the world? Editor: It makes the drawing intensely personal. I’m getting a stronger sense of vulnerability and a very raw exposure of the artist’s interior world. It moves beyond simple abstraction. Curator: Indeed. It’s almost as if she is laying bare a psychological process right before us. And what does 'sublimation' even *mean*? Here, the term resonates: a transformation of base instincts into something higher, more refined, or even—with a heavy emphasis on 'even'—artistic? That sounds exhausting! Editor: (laughing) It really does. I’ll certainly need to spend more time thinking about that definition! But seeing the two sections communicating feels crucial now, with that context in mind. Thank you for drawing that out! Curator: The pleasure's mine. Art, in its best moments, is never "out there"… It lives only ever “in here.”