First gained attention for her autobiographical and psychologically loaded sculptures in the 1960s, Louise Bourgeois is said to have inspired a whole generation of feminist artists of the 80s and 90s. Couple II which suggests adolescent confusion belongs to a series of sculptural works she began in the 1990s. For Bourgeois who participated in the family business of tapestry restoration since she was very young, the piecing together of the fabric in this sculpture must have seemed a natural process. Bourgeois's work, where there coexists dichotomies of reason and emotion, public and private, love and hate, affection and cruelty, is always filled with ambiguity and the final interpretation is left to the viewer. (AK)

(Born in Paris, France, 1911, and lives in New York City, U.S.A.)

Couple II

1996
fabric and knee brace in wooden and glass vitrine
68.58×152.4×81.28cm (couple)
165 x 119 x 201cm (vitrine)
Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery
Sarah Norton Goodyear Fund, 1999
©Louise Bourgeois