NAUTILUS
Eyes (nine elements), by Louise Bourgeois (2001). PHOTO/Williams College Museum of Art/Arthur Evans
Bourgeois’ work has always attracted attention: She was the first female artist to be given a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and her sculptures are exhibited around the world. Her most famous piece, Maman, a giant, bronze spider-like creation, has been reproduced all over, from Spain’s Guggenheim to the Qatar National Convention Center in Doha.
The Eye Benches are crafted by Italian stone masons from granite sourced from Zimbabwe and have a disembodied, slightly lazy-eyed gaze. Their curved, high backs almost entirely the people seated on them from view.
Unlike much furniture design, which privileges comfort and function over more abstract concepts, these benches are Dali-esque sculptures designed to arrest the viewer in their own gaze, their true function obscured at first glance. Bourgeois once described her work thus: “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 here. Nobody is going to keep me from seeing what is instead of what I would like.”
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