Each of Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Alice Adams’ sculptural bodies writhe and contort in an euphorically intimate performance, whilst climaxing around numerous substantial, none-conformist aesthetics such as rubber, foam, latex, fibreglass, papier mâiche, netting and wire fencing. Ultimately, the novel forms belonging to the three artists range from lubricated sausage-like suspensions to fleshy bulging mounds and tangles of woven metal cable and rubber tubing. Altogether, they make for a display which is caught between emancipation and bondage. Elements of this display are being acted out once again with Abstract Erotic: Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Alice Adams.
A 1966 group exhibition by influential American art critic Lucy Lippard affirmed the three artists as innovators and instigators, which they are positioned as once again here. Named Eccentric Abstraction and displayed at the Fishback Gallery in New York, the exhibition brought together creations by eight contemporary artists operating in none-conventional materials. Significantly, Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse and Alice Adams, who are the focus of this exhibition being featured at London’s Courtauld Gallery were the only women in the show. They were also brought together through their focus on producing salient sculptural pieces that confronted prevailing conceptualisations about modern form and minimalist geometric order.
Later on, Lippard reflected,
“I can see now that I was looking for ‘feminist art.”
The Courtauld’s major exhibition gathers the three artists for the first time since Lippard’s significant 1966 presentation of their work, and places each piece within a contemporary context that is not only temporal, but conceptual. Abstract Erotic features 30 works lifted from public and private collections,such as Adams’ scarcely seen, gargantuan,serpentine aluminium chain-link creation, Big Aluminium 2 (1965 and partly reconstructed), suspended to reflect its original appearance in Eccentric Abstraction. Alongside this are Bourgeois’ gleaming bronze Janus Fleuri (1968) and Hesse’s playfully suggestive orgy of swollen, weighted sacks, Untitled or Not Yet (1966). The gist of it is that this display by the Courtauld Gallery, is about the notion of ‘play’, in all of its mischievous, devious glory, along with its platonic and erotic, nature.
Notably, Lippard authored the term “abstract erotic” to disentangle the Eccentric Abstraction exhibition from the more extroverted and tantalising gallery presentations which jumped into bed with the art scene at the time. ‘Abstract erotic’ sculpture is not categorically ‘sexual’ or literal, on the contrary, it calls to a sense of touch, and to the fantastical. The pieces included within the London exhibition come in numerous shapes and sizes, from a couple centimeters to three meters.
Ultimately, Abstract Erotic is daringly refreshing in its reflection of the body, along with its possibilities, and impossibilities.
Abstract Erotic: Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Alice Adams – 14th of September 2025
The Courtauld Gallery
