ABSTRACT EROTIC : LOUISE BOURGEOIS, EVA HESSE AND ALICE ADAMS
(english edition)

This ambitious new catalogue highlights the erotic and playful sculpture of Louise
Bourgeois, Eva Hesse and Alice Adams, foregrounding their shared commitment
to using abstract form to ask important questions about fluid sexuality, bodies and
humour. It accompanies a major exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery.
In 1966, the groundbreaking exhibition Eccentric Abstraction, held at the Fischbach
Gallery, New York, launched the career of Bourgeois, Hesse and Adams. It would
profoundly shape the language and legacy of post-war American sculpture. This
book returns us to this pivotal moment and, in bringing together these three
important artists for the first time since 1966, explores the emergence of a new
form of ‘abstract erotic’ sculpture.
Abstract Erotic brings together a series of internationally recognised scholars of
the three artists, presenting new insights into their practice, and its wider relevance
to the art of the 1960s until now. And by putting the work of Alice Adams in
conversation with the work of established figures Bourgeois and Hesse, it aims to
bring her work to the attention of a wider public.