It is not strictly abstract, nor openly erotic, but Abstract Erotic at the Courtauld certainly has balls.

Louise Bourgeois, Tits, 1967. The Easton Foundation, New York. © The Easton Foundation, VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2025. Photo_ Christopher Burke

On the 3rd floor of the Courtauld Gallery, somewhere between a Monet and a Manet, is the entrance to a two-room show that is anything but Impressionist.

Here, sculptures by three women artists from the 1960s are standing, hanging, and decaying in various suggestive ways. Unusual materials – latex, fibreglass, fencing – meet unconventional storytelling. There are objects that look like sausages, or snot or turds.

I would say this is less abstract and more allusive, less erotic and more bodily. But Abstract Erotic certainly sounds catchier.

Installation view of Abstract Erotic, The Courtauld © Fergus Carmichael

Back in 1966, Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse and Alice Adams were all exhibited together at a show titled Eccentric Abstraction, curated by Lucy Lippard. As Dr Alexandra Gerstein, one of the curators of Abstract Erotic, puts it – this is an exhibition of four women – not only the three artists, but also the person who brought them together.

Even though they all lived and worked in New York, they came from different generations, social classes, and were not a group. They have not been exhibited together since. But there is a strong sense of unity in their works.

The objects here aren’t the usual upright sculptures still frequently seen in public spaces today. Back in the 1960s they represented a completely new visual vocabulary. By that time Pop Art and Minimalism had revolutionised the art world. But the works seen here were even more unusual.

The pared-down palette, industrial materials, bodily subject matter – all have been seen in art before, but not all together, and not quite like this.

In the 1960s, second wave feminism was on the rise in the US and Europe. However, the art world was somewhat lagging. Eccentric Abstraction included three female and five male artists, which at the time was a very high proportion of women.

Lippard was a young curator observing the proliferation of male gaze eroticism in art. In response, she brought together three women artists who had a dramatically different take on the erotic. Imagination and tactility defined their works, instead of titillation and seduction.

At the Courtauld, the exhibition is divided into two rooms. The first room is introductory, with examples of smaller-scale works by all three artists. The second room is divided into three zones – each dedicated to one artist.

Alice Adams is the only sculptor in the exhibition who is still alive and helped put the show together. Originally trained as a tapestry artist in France, she widened the concept of weaving to include, first, raw fibre and then metal.

She used salvaged steel cables from demolition sites, ‘weaving’ them together. The resulting works create a sense of tension between industrial material and suggested bodily shapes.

One of the works from the 1966 exhibition is recreated here. A floating Big Aluminium 2 doesn’t look exactly the same as it did almost 60 years ago, but it still combines the seemingly irreconcilable weightlessness of the transparent shape and the heaviness of the metal mesh from which it is made.

Eva Hesse trained as a painter. Some of the works in the first room demonstrate her gradual journey from colourful, two-dimensional works to sculptural forms in minimal hues.

Once again, industrial materials are employed not in the way they were intended. Hesse liked to be playful with the way she worked. There is a lot of tongue-in-cheek suggestiveness, but also very conscious dialogue with the art of the time.

A long, grey rectangular beam with spherical shapes and strings hanging from it may look like your usual Minimalist art. But on closer inspection you will see that the spaces between the spherical (boob-shaped) protrusions are gradually increasing, the strings are purposefully too long and hence form random shapes on touching the floor (are they pools of milk?). The uniform-grey surface is in fact covered in tactile paint with traces of fingerprints.

Louise Bourgeois is a famous artist now. Her Maman – the grand spider mother – was the first installation in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall and has returned for its 25th anniversary celebrations. However, she was not so well-known back in 1960s, even though she was a couple of generations older that the two other artists.

Her work Fillette (Sweeter Version) is the most unambiguous item in the show. Quite clearly an erect penis – a long-standing metaphor for power - it is nevertheless rendered powerless by being suspended from a hook and given a playful, if somewhat disturbing, title. Fillette means little girl in French. But to me also sounds like filet – suggesting a piece of meat.

Fillette, like many other works here, was made using latex. A new material at the time, it provided a skin-like appearance. However, it has a very short lifespan, becoming darker and more brittle as it deteriorates. The works at the Courtauld are therefore either extremely fragile originals, or more recent casts.

What unites the three artists in the show, is their disregard for the perceived beauty of the objects they create. Ugliness is not a sin here. All bodies are welcome. They also weren’t interested in the longevity of their pieces; Hesse in particular linked the temporary nature of both life and art.

Bourgeois’s other works explore the uncomfortable and the secret. She is known to have gone through psychoanalysis. One work is named after her analyst. Some of her sculptures in this show – whether turd-like or almost skeletal – share a fascination with tunnels, scary interiors, and body-like shapes.

But then others are shiny, seductive and playful, like her unambiguously titled Tits. Clearly referring to female body parts, it is nevertheless not a straightforward object. With its polished white surface and plain shape, from some angles it looks like a Minimalist sculpture; somewhat of a sausage, with suggestive pointy ends.

Louise Bourgeois, Hanging Janus, 1968. The Easton Foundation, New York. © The Easton Foundation, VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2025. Photo_ Christopher Burke

Bourgeois is well known for such ambiguity. Another work in the show, Hanging Janus, could be an Xbox controller, or a black croissant. A ‘double-headed’ work like Tits, it suggests both male and female body parts.

However, our perception of it reveals the way we see things in general. We associate them with the images that we already have in our heads. Sometimes these images are suggested to us. Has the show’s title given us a certain nudge in the erotic direction? Without this premise, some works could look like clouds, or bee swarms, or cocoons. With the exception of the more obvious Fillette, this could have been a nature show. But then we are part of nature too.

The Courtauld, in case you didn’t realise, is two institutions combined, and this is reflected in the quality of their shows. There is a rigorously academic Institute, which boasts the largest number of art historians in one place anywhere on the planet.

There is also the Gallery, a public facing space that invites interaction and discussion from a wider group of people. The permanent collection is made of text-book Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art, including Van Gogh and Cezanne, as well as Medieval and Islamic art. An entry ticket includes the exhibition but does not stop you from also seeing some of Britain’s most prized paintings. Furthermore, the Courtauld is mostly, refreshingly, not crowded – a tremendous bonus in summer-time London.

If you have a couple of hours and would like to see some slightly naughty art explained to you by very serious art historians, look no further. Should the ‘ugly’ sculptures make you a little queasy, there’s a Renoir in the next room, and even a Medieval Madonna one floor down.

Louise Bourgeois, Untitled, 1971. The Easton Foundation, New York. © The Easton Foundation, VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2025. Photo_ Christopher Burke

Abstract Erotic: Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Alice Adams is at the Courtauld, London, 20 June – 14 September, 2025.

Runs in conjunction with Louise Bourgeois: Drawings from the 1960s

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