Untitled

Untitled (1949) is significant within Louise Bourgeois’s drawing oeuvre because it codifies an important aspect of her early visual language. She was working on totemic sculptures when she made it, which is articulated by the drawing’s central vertical form. The hairlike strands that drape the central form are bulbous on one side and pointed like a spider leg on the other. Untitled is characterized by an immediacy of mark making; Bourgeois gesturally defined the inside of forms with quick marks of her pen. By implying a ground plane and compressing the image’s negative shapes, she created a cramped, psychologically charged interior space.