Nigel Ip

Abstract Erotic at the Courtauld is a tribute show to the American art critic and feminist curator Lucy Lippard, who formed friendships with the three artists on display – Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, and Alice Adams – and provided some of the earliest writings on their work.

In 1966, she curated the Eccentric Abstraction exhibition at the Fischbach Gallery in New York, coining the term ‘abstract erotic’ to describe a new kind of sculpture emerging from artists’ studios in 1960s New York which used unexpected materials and produced a ‘sensuous response’ in the viewer ‘even if they are not supposed to be touched’. Her inclusion of Bourgeois, Hesse, and Adams was a bold move at a time when women artists were not regularly exhibited or even known.

The Courtauld exhibition reflects Lippard’s exhibition in its small scale and is probably the first show on sculpture in the Denise Coates Exhibition Galleries since the renovation. Every work on show was produced in the 1960s, their materials varying from latex to chain-link fencing. The first room clusters the three artists together, while the second gives each of them dedicated wall space to understand their processes and approaches.

Personally, this is not an easy show to absorb. It feels too open-ended and one doesn’t really know what one is supposed to take from it. The works are definitely unusual, sometimes humorous, but they are difficult things to engage with. And if we do react with some kind of visceral response, it almost feels inappropriate.

Either way, I am clearly not the right audience for this. But technically, as a £4 add-on on top of the standard admission ticket, you may as well experience it while you’re there.

Abstract Erotic: Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Alice Adams (20 June – 14 September 2025) is at the Courtauld Gallery, London, https://courtauld.ac.uk/