Abstract Erotic: Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Alice Adams to open at The Courtauld Gallery
Press images are available here: https://tinyurl.com/2h5zmab9
Abstract Erotic: Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Alice Adams is the first exhibition to bring together sculpture by three pioneering artists of the 20th century who, during the 1960s, produced startling new bodies of work offering an idiosyncratic and eccentric reimagining of sculptural form.
Exploring unconventional materials, including latex, rubber, foam, fibreglass, papier mâché, netting and wire fencing, these three artists turned modern sculpture on its head. Their novel forms ranged from slick, sausage-like suspensions, to fleshy protruding mounds and tangles of woven metal cable and rubber tubing. By combining humour, abstraction and eroticism, this new work signalled a radical shift in how sculpture was made and encountered.
In 1966 the influential American art critic Lucy Lippard staged a groundbreaking group exhibition titled Eccentric Abstraction at the Fishbach Gallery in New York, bringing together work by eight contemporary artists working in non-traditional materials. The exhibition went on to profoundly shape the language and legacy of post-war American sculpture. Bourgeois, Hesse, and Adams, the only women in the show, were united in their commitment to producing striking, experimental sculptures that challenged prevailing ideas about modernist form and minimalist geometric order. Lippard saw something distinct in their emphasis on soft materials and bodily forms, acknowledging their status as women artists working in an art world dominated by men. As Lippard later reflected, “I can see now that I was looking for ‘feminist art’”.
The Courtauld’s major exhibition will reunite these three artists for the first time since Lippard’s important 1966 show, offering a unique opportunity to experience their remarkable work together. The exhibition will feature 30 works on loan from public and private collections, including Adams’ rarely seen, large-scale, sinuous aluminium chain-link sculpture Big Aluminium 2 (1965 and partly remade), suspended to echo its original presentation in Eccentric Abstraction, as well as Bourgeois’ iconic, polished bronze Janus Fleuri (1968) and Hesse’s playful cluster of bulbous, weighted sacks, Untitled or Not Yet (1966).
Lippard coined the term ‘abstract erotic’ to disentangle the Eccentric Abstraction exhibition from the more overt and titillating gallery shows appearing on the art scene at that time. ‘Abstract erotic’ sculpture is not explicitly ‘sexual’ or literal but rather it appeals to a sense of touch and to the imagination. The works on display in the Courtauld exhibition will range in size from a few centimetres to three meters, and illuminate the eccentric, erotic, and abstract ways in which these artists reconfigured not just bodies, but how we experience the body in all its fantastical and surprising shapes and forms.
Although of different generations, Bourgeois, Hesse, and Adams were all making art in the 1960s, living and exhibiting in downtown Manhattan. At the time of Lippard’s exhibition, Bourgeois was the most established of the three artists, and by the 1970s was being lauded by a younger generation of emerging female artists. When Hesse died in May 1970, aged just 34, she had created a considerable legacy and a significant body of extraordinary work. She described it as ‘absurd’ in both appearance and attitude, and explained how she liked it to remain in the ‘ugly zone’. Alice Adams, now in her nineties, continues to make work in her native New York. Adams was known in the 1950s and 60s as a fibre artist, before turning to more industrial materials in the mid-60s. During the 1970s her art practice took a different path as she undertook major outdoor public commissions and installations in airports, university campuses, and other urban sites. This will be the first exhibition of her work in the UK and her most substantial museum presentation.
Abstract Erotic: Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Alice Adams is grounded in the research and teaching of Professor Jo Applin, Walter H. Annenberg Professor in the History of Art, most notably her 2012 book Eccentric Objects: Rethinking Sculpture in 1960s America. Applin is Director of the Centre of the Art of the Americas at The Courtauld Institute of Art, and co-curated the exhibition with Dr Alexandra Gerstein, Curator of Sculpture and Decorative Arts at The Courtauld Gallery.
The exhibition is supported by the Huo Family Foundation.
To coincide with the exhibition, Louise Bourgeois: Drawings from the 1960s, will be presented in the Gilbert and Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery, co-curated by Jo Applin and Dr Ketty Gottardo, Martin Halusa Senior Curator of Works on Paper at The Courtauld Gallery. The display will present a bold group of drawings by Bourgeois, revealing the central role of drawing in her work and its influence on her sculptural practice.
The programme of displays in the Drawings Gallery is generously supported by the International Music and Art Foundation, with additional support from James Bartos. Louise Bourgeois: Drawings from the 1960s is also supported by the Tavolozza Foundation.
Abstract Erotic: Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Alice Adams will be accompanied by a catalogue with contributions by Lucy Lippard and leading art historians on this period, Jo Applin, Julia Bryan-Wilson, Briony Fer, and Mignon Nixon.
Tickets for the exhibition are on sale to Courtauld Friends from Tuesday 25 March, 10am. Tickets are on general sale from Thursday 27 March, 10am.
Tickets include entry to Louise Bourgeois: Drawings from the 1960s and the permanent collection.
Abstract Erotic: Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Alice Adams
20 June – 14 September 2025
Denise Coates Exhibition Galleries, Floor 3
Louise Bourgeois: Drawings from the 1960s
20 Jun – 14 September 2025
Gilbert and Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery, Floor 1
The Courtauld Gallery
Somerset House, Strand
London WC2R 0RN
Opening hours: 10.00 – 18.00 (last entry 17.15)
Temporary Exhibition tickets (including entry to our Permanent Collection and displays) – Weekday tickets from £14; Weekend tickets from £16.
Friends and Under-18s go free. Other concessions available