Bronze, black patina
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
ARTIST ROOMS
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/louise-bourgeois-2351" aria-label="More by Louise Bourgeois" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Louise Bourgeois</a>
Tits
ARTIST ROOMS 
Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. Lent by Artist Rooms Foundation 2011
abstraction
body
breast
figure
from recognisable sources
gender
people
social comment
society
<p><span>Tits </span>is a bronze sculpture with a black, polished patina. The sculpture is curved and kidney-shaped, ending in two rounded points where the bronze shows through the patina. Bourgeois completed <span>Tits</span> in 1967 during a period in which she produced sculptural works that could be seen as abstract forms or depictions of body parts, often genitalia.</p>
sculpture bronze black patina
26 October 2013 – 18 May 2014
2014-05-18
26 October 2013 – 18 May 2014
2014-05-18
2013-10-26
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Edinburgh, UK)
http://www.nationalgalleries.org/
2013-10-26
ARTIST ROOMS Louise Bourgeois
Collection based display
18 July 2014 – 12 October 2014
2014-10-12
18 July 2014 – 12 October 2014
2014-10-12
2014-07-18
Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (Middlesbrough, UK)
http://www.visitmima.com/
2014-07-18
ARTIST ROOMS 2014: Louise Bourgeois
Loan-out
16 January 2015 – 19 April 2015
2015-04-19
16 January 2015 – 19 April 2015
2015-04-19
2015-01-16
Southampton City Art Gallery (Southampton, UK)
http://www.southampton.gov.uk/leisure/arts
2015-01-16
ARTIST ROOMS 2015: Louise Bourgeois
Loan-out
10 June 2016 – 18 June 2017
2017-06-18
10 June 2016 – 18 June 2017
2017-06-18
2016-06-10
Tate Modern (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/
2016-06-10
ARTIST ROOMS Louise Bourgeois
Collection based display
1 September 2017 – 18 November 2017
2017-11-18
1 September 2017 – 18 November 2017
2017-11-18
2017-09-01
Perth Museum & Art Gallery (Perth, UK)
http://www.pkc.gov.uk/
2017-09-01
ARTIST ROOMS 2017: Louise Bourgeois
Loan-out
22 January 2019 – 24 March 2019
2019-03-24
22 January 2019 – 31 March 2019
2019-03-31
2019-01-22
Kettle’s Yard (Cambridge, UK)
http://www.kettlesyard.co.uk/
2019-01-22
ARTIST ROOMS 2019: Louise Bourgeois
Loan-out
6 July 2021 – 16 January 2022
2022-01-16
6 July 2021 – 16 January 2022
2022-01-16
2021-07-06
Tate Liverpool (Liverpool, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/liverpool/
2021-07-06
ARTIST ROOMS Louise Bourgeois
Collection based display
23 July 2022 – 6 October 2024
2024-10-06
23 July 2022 – 19 November 2022
2022-11-19
2022-07-23
Rugby Art Gallery and Museum (Rugby, UK)
18 March 2023 – 26 June 2023
2023-06-26
2023-03-18
Dorset Museum (Dorchester, UK)
8 July 2023 – 9 September 2023
2023-09-09
2023-07-08
Grundy Art Gallery (Blackpool, UK)
18 November 2023 – 11 February 2024
2024-02-11
2023-11-18
Burton Art Gallery and Museum (Bideford, UK)
2 March 2024 – 9 June 2024
2024-06-09
2024-03-02
Aberdeen Art Gallery (Aberdeen, UK)
http://www.aagm.co.uk
6 July 2024 – 6 October 2024
2024-10-06
2024-07-06
Compton Verney (Compton Verney, UK)
2022-07-23
Louise Bourgeois
Loan-out
Tits
object: 121 × 267 × 152 mm, 5kg. 7kg on bin.
<a href="/search?gid=999999788" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">ARTIST ROOMS</a> 
Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. Lent by Artist Rooms Foundation 2011
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<p>
<i>Tits </i>is a bronze sculpture with a black, polished patina. The sculpture is curved and kidney-shaped, ending in two rounded points where the bronze shows through the patina. Bourgeois completed <i>Tits</i> in 1967 during a period in which she produced sculptural works that could be seen as abstract forms or depictions of body parts, often genitalia.</p>
<p>The title of the work, <i>Tits</i>, references female breasts and the sculpture could be read as two breasts fused together, with the non-patinated bronze at the tips representing the areolae. Yet the singularity of the object is also suggestive of a phallic form. This ambiguity is characteristic of Bourgeois’s work at this time. Indeed, she commented that she was keen to produce sculptures which could be read as indicative of either sex: ‘There has always been sexual suggestiveness in my work. Sometimes I am totally concerned with female shapes – clusters of breasts like clouds – but often I merge the imagery – phallic breasts, male and female, active and passive.’ (Quoted in Morris 2007, p.268.) Her interest in combining male and female body parts is more obvious in the sculpture <i>Le Trani Episode</i> 1971 (Hauser and Wirth, London), in which an object resembling <i>Tits</i> is overlaid by another more flaccid form. Again it is not clear that either object is gendered male or female as both parts have breast-like and phallic attributes. This anatomical ambiguity plays out, perhaps most famously, in Bourgeois’s <i>Janus </i>series, which consists of one porcelain and five bronze works that are displayed hanging in space. <i>Janus Fleuri </i>1968 (Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/bourgeois-janus-fleuri-al00347" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>AL00347</span></a>) has a similar basic form to <i>Tits</i>, with a more exaggerated arc and extended extremities that resemble the foreskin or glans. At the centre of the object, the smooth surface appears to have ruptured, revealing a bumpy terrain with a central crevasse suggestive of a vulva. The reference in the title to Janus, the Roman two-faced god, alludes to androgyny as much as opposition between the sexes.</p>
<p>
<i>Tits</i>, like <i>Janus Fleuri</i>, may be seen to exemplify a ‘part-object’, a term used by psychoanalysts to refer to parts of the body that attest to physical and emotional relationships between infants and adults. The art historian Mignon Nixon has written about the part-object and its influence on Bourgeois’s work. Nixon has argued that by fragmenting parts of the body, creating ‘part-objects’, Bourgeois represented their physiological and sexual characteristics, gesturing to the complex and conflicting attachments we have to our own bodies and the bodies of others. The critic Rosalind Krauss has also written on this theme, looking specifically at the breast in relation to Bourgeois:</p>
<p class="cttext">
</p><blockquote>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, penises, anuses.<br/>(Quoted in Morris 2007, p.200.)</blockquote>
<p>When speaking of similar works produced around the same time as <i>Tits</i>, Bourgeois appeared to justify Krauss’s interpretation: ‘I made a drawing of breasts pressed against each other; there was a double attitude to be like a mother, and to be liked by a mother … the lips like sucking. The whole person becomes a breast that stretches in order to give.’ (Quoted in Duncan Macmillan, ‘Blood Ties’, <i>Modern Painters</i>, May 2008, p.75.)</p>
<p>
<b>Further reading</b>
<br/>Mignon Nixon, <i>Fantastic Reality: Louise Bourgeois and a Story of Modern Art</i>, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London 2005.<br/>Frances Morris (ed.), <i>Louise Bourgeois</i>, exhibition catalogue, Tate Modern, London 2007.<br/>Lucy Askew and Anthony d’Offay, <i>Louise Bourgeois: A Woman Without Secrets</i>, exhibition catalogue, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh 2013, p.92, reproduced p.35.</p>
<p>Allan Madden<br/>The University of Edinburgh<br/>February 2015</p>
<p>
<i>The University of Edinburgh is a research partner of ARTIST ROOMS.</i>
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Summary
2016-07-12T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
abstraction body breast figure from recognisable sources gender people social comment society