Louise Bourgeois - 20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale - Morning Session New York Thursday, November 18, 2021 | Phillips

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    "The theme of the Eyes has preoccupied me for many decades. I have always said that with words you can say whatever you want, but the Eyes never lie. The Eyes are a metaphor for the truth, which is what I am after. Whether it is an Eye that sees the reality of things or whether it is an eye that sees a world of fantasy…It is the quality of your Eyes and the strength of your Eyes that are expressed in this [work]…I live in a visual world where my Eyes are everything." —Louise Bourgeois

    • Provenance

      The Artist
      Robert Miller Gallery, New York
      Acquired from the above by the present owner in February 1995

    • Exhibited

      Cincinnati, Taft Museum; Miami, Florida International University Museum of Art; Austin, Laguna Gloria Museum of Art; St. Louis, Washington University Gallery of Art; Syracuse, Everson Museum of Art, Recent Sculpture by Louise Bourgeois, May 5, 1987–November 26, 1989, n.p. (illustrated)
      Barcelona, Fundacio Caixa de Pensions, Pulsio, May 23–July 14, 1991, p. 16 (illustrated)
      Monterrey, Galeria Ramis Barquet, Louise Bourgeois, October–November 1993, n.p. (illustrated)
      Paris, Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Féminin/Masculin, October 17, 1995–January 16, 1996, no. 225, pp. 167, 375 (illustrated, p. 167)

    • Literature

      Donald Kuspit and Linda Weintraub, Process and Product: The Making of Eight Contemporary Masterworks, exh. cat., Edith C. Blum Art Institute, Bard College Center, Annandale-on-Hudson, 1987, p. 59 (illustrated)
      Louise Bourgeois,, exh. cat., Frankfurter Kunstverein, 1990, no. 27, p. 37 (illustrated)
      Thomas McEvilley, Sculpture in the Age of Doubt, New York, 1999, pp. 243, 245 (illustrated, p. 245)

    • Artist Biography

      Louise Bourgeois

      French-American • 1911 - 2010

      Known for her idiosyncratic style, Louise Bourgeois was a pioneering and iconic figure of twentieth and early twenty-first century art. Untied to an art historical movement, Bourgeois was a singular voice, both commanding and quiet.

      Bourgeois was a prolific printmaker, draftsman, sculptor and painter. She employed diverse materials including metal, fabric, wood, plaster, paper and paint in a range of scale — both monumental and intimate. She used recurring themes and subjects (animals, insects, architecture, the figure, text and abstraction) as form and metaphor to explore the fragility of relationships and the human body. Her artworks are meditations of emotional states: loneliness, jealousy, pride, anger, fear, love and longing.

      View More Works

Property from a Prominent Private Collection

116

Eye

incised with the artist's initials and date "LB. 81." on the underside of the sculpture
marble
sculpture 3 3/8 x 5 1/2 x 4 1/2 in. (8.6 x 14 x 11.4 cm)
base 5 1/8 x 9 3/4 x 6 1/8 in. (13 x 24.8 x 15.6 cm)
overall 8 1/2 x 9 3/4 x 6 1/8 in. (21.6 x 24.8 x 15.6 cm)

Executed in 1981, this work is unique.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$200,000 - 300,000 

Sold for $529,200

Contact Specialist

John McCord
Head of Day Sale, Morning Session, New York
+1 212 940 1261
jmccord@phillips.com

20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale - Morning Session

New York Auction 18 November 2021