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Though named for feminine anatomy, Louise Bourgeois’ Tits, 1967-1982, is an ambiguously gendered sculpture. The black marble work, shaped like two footballs fused together, recalls both breasts and the base of a phallus; its anatomical corollary is further confused by its abstracted form. Bourgeois’ Tits sit in the round, detached from the human body, a sculpted object with heavy psychoanalytical connotations.
Bourgeois conceived of Tits in 1967, and executed the first editions of the sculpture in plaster and onyx that same year. Concurrently, she began working with marble in Italy, and enjoyed how the medium expressed the softness of skin.i The present work was created in 1982, the year of the artist’s traveling retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York—Bourgeois was the first female sculptor to receive such an honor. A bronze edition of Tits resides in the shared collection of the National Galleries of Scotland and the Tate Modern, London.
“I have fun carving marble. I can’t destroy it. I’m not going to be destroyed either, by the way.”
—Louise BourgeoisTits draws on a rich art history of sculpted bodies, and attendant associations of sensuality, objectification, and desire. The crude title—not breasts, but Tits—speaks to the ambivalence of women’s position in heterosexual relationships, as both objects of an often violent, patriarchal desire, and as individuals with their own sexual agency. For Bourgeois, black marble was the ideal medium to work through this ambivalence: “there’s a great element of pleasure in the black marble,” she explained in a 1982 interview, “the pleasure to hack away at something which offers enough resistance…attacking a material that can resist you. And this has a direct symbolism with human relations.”ii
Sarah Goodridge, Beauty Revealed, 1828. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Image: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Gloria Manney, 2006, 2006.235.74 Known for a wide-ranging oeuvre that mines her own trauma and relationships to gender and motherhood, Tits reveals the role of Freudian psychoanalysis in Bourgeois’ work. Bourgeois participated in psychoanalytic therapy for fifteen years, and found the practice useful for working through her past, and expressing it in her art.iii As art historian Rosalind Krauss writes, Tits functions, in psychoanalytic terms, as a “part-object,” a part of the body that becomes objectified at infancy: “For the newborn, suckling divides the mother’s breast from its bodily support, separating the organ from her as the target to satisfy the infant’s needs. The world of the infant splinters into such part-objects: its own desiring organs as well as their reciprocal targets: so many breasts, mouths, bellies…”iv Tits draws on this separation, as a body part isolated from the body, so abstracted, that its legibility as sculpted breasts is called into question.
“There has always been a sexual suggestiveness in my work. Sometimes I am totally concerned with female shapes… but often I merge the imagery—phallic breasts, male and female, active and passive.”
—Louise BourgeoisThe gendered ambiguity of Tits is emblematic of Bourgeois’ approach to sculpture from the 1960s onwards. Bourgeois found rich meaning in forms that could read as both male and female at once, as a visual representation of the ambivalent emotions she herself felt towards human sexuality. Complex and multivalent, Bourgeois’ Tits move beyond corporeal representation, towards the expression of an emotional, embodied state.
Constantin Brancusi, Male Torso, 1917. Cleveland Museum of Art. Image: © Cleveland Museum of Art / Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection / Bridgeman Images, Artwork: © 2023 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York i Margherita Leoni-Figini, “Louise Bourgeois,” Centre Pompidou, 2008, online.
ii Louise Bourgeois (1982), quoted in Barbara Flug Colin, “A Conversation with Louise Bourgeois,” Frigate: The Transverse Review of Books, 2000, online.
iii Bourgeois, quoted in Juliet Mitchell, “Love and Hate, Girl and Boy,” The London Review of Books, vol. 35, no. 21, Nov. 6, 2014, online.
iv Rosalind Krauss, quoted in Allan Madden, “Louise Borgeois: Tits, 1967,” Tate, Feb. 2015, online.
Description
Please see main sale page for guarantee notice https://www.phillips.com/auctions/auction/NY011123
Provenance
The Artist
Cheim & Read, New York
Peter Blum Gallery, New York (acquired from the above in 2000)
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2009Exhibited
Los Angeles, Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Louise Bourgeois, November 17–December 1, 1984
Cincinnati, The Taft Museum; Miami, Frost Art Museum at Florida International University; Austin, Laguna Gloria Art Museum; St. Louis, Henry Art Gallery, Washington University; Syracuse, Everson Museum of Art, Louise Bourgeois, May 5, 1987–November 26, 1989, n.p.
Humlebæk, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Louise Bourgeois: Life as Art, February 15–June 22, 2003, no. 20, pp. 36, 78 (illustrated, p. 36; dated 1967-1968)
The Hague, Gemeentemuseum, Bellmer / Bourgeois – Double Sexus: Supplemental Installation, September 11, 2010–January 16, 2011, p. 147 (illustrated)
Rotterdam, Kunsthal, Avant-gardes 1870 to the present: The Collection of the Triton Foundation, October 7, 2012–January 20, 2013, pp. 21, 534-535, 540 (illustrated, pp. 21, 535)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.
LIVING THE AVANT-GARDE: THE TRITON COLLECTION FOUNDATION
22
Tits
black marble
9 1/2 x 21 1/4 x 11 1/4 in. (24.1 x 54 x 28.6 cm)
Conceived in 1967 and executed in 1982.
Estimate
$250,000 - 350,000
Sold for $317,500
Carolyn Kolberg
Associate Specialist, Head of Sale
+1 212 940 1206
CKolberg@phillips.com
Living the Avant-Garde: The Triton Collection Foundation, Evening Sale Part I
New York Auction 14 November 2023
1
Wassily Kandinsky
Entwurf zu Komposition IV
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
Sold for $889,000
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2
Amedeo Modigliani
Tête de jeune fille (Louise)
Estimate $4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for $5,868,000
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3
Gino Severini
Mare = Ballerina
Estimate $80,000 - 120,000
Sold for $444,500
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4
Theo van Doesburg
Composition (Seated Figure)
Estimate $900,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $1,016,000
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5
Georges Braque
La bouteille de Bass
Estimate $7,000,000 - 10,000,000
Sold for $8,465,000
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6
Joan Miró
Personnage et oiseaux
Estimate $700,000 - 1,000,000
Sold for $889,000
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7
Alexander Calder
New Blériot
Estimate $3,000,000 - 5,000,000
Sold for $3,206,000
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8
Jean Dubuffet
Inspecteurs Sinoque et Dingue
Estimate $4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for $4,900,000
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9
Jean-Paul Riopelle
Ariane
Estimate $600,000 - 800,000
Sold for $1,330,500
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10
Fernand Léger
Le 14 juillet
Estimate $15,000,000 - 20,000,000
Sold for $17,625,000
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11
Édouard Vuillard
Le Cantique des cantiques
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $1,512,000
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12
Maurice Denis
La Vendange mystique
Estimate $300,000 - 400,000
Sold for $431,800
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13
Pierre Bonnard
Autoportrait
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $2,238,000
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14
Edgar Degas
Le petit déjeuner après le bain
Estimate $2,500,000 - 3,500,000
Sold for $2,480,000
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15
Roy Lichtenstein
Woman Contemplating a Yellow Cup (Study)
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $1,996,000
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16
Pablo Picasso
Femme en corset lisant un livre
Estimate $15,000,000 - 20,000,000
Sold for $14,762,500
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17
Heinrich Campendonk
Im Garten - Frau, Pferd, Ziege
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
Sold for $698,500
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18
Emil Nolde
Iris
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
Sold for $482,600
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19
Pablo Picasso
Femme accroupie
Estimate $200,000 - 300,000
Sold for $330,200
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20
Joan Mitchell
Untitled
Estimate $8,000,000 - 12,000,000
Sold for $7,892,500
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21
Piero Manzoni
Achrome
Estimate $2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Sold for $1,754,000
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22
Louise Bourgeois
Tits
Estimate $250,000 - 350,000
Sold for $317,500
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23
Yves Klein
Anthropométrie sans titre, (ANT 149)
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $1,016,000
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24
Max Beckmann
Blühender Garten
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $508,000
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25
Émile Bernard
Paysage de Bretagne (Paysage avec deux Bretonnes et vache)
Estimate $1,200,000 - 1,800,000
Sold for $1,143,000
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26
Paul Sérusier
La Cueillette des pommes
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $1,391,000
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27
Félix Vallotton
Papotage
Estimate $300,000 - 500,000
Sold for $330,200
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28
Paul Gauguin
Masque de Meyer de Haan
Estimate $60,000 - 80,000
Sold for $66,040
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29
Robert Ryman
Untitled, Prototype
Estimate $300,000 - 500,000
Sold for $254,000
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30
Sam Francis
Purple, Orange & Green
Estimate $200,000 - 300,000
Sold for $482,600
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