that sculpture in the national gallery of canada by french american artist louise bourgeois titled the arch of hysteria. it is said to be inspired by and represent one of the many pose people who suffer from hysteria make.
none of the images i've seen of the hysteric arch have exactly the same posture of the statue by bourgeois.
the sculpture has become news-notorious for another copy in the private collection of tony podesta an american lobbyist, once accused of being involved in a world wide pedophile cult by the journalist andrew breitbart.
podesta and his brother have held fund raisers at a restaurant called comet pizza where the investigators into the pedophile cult imagine some of the alleged abuses are going on.
the controversy surrounding bourgeois sculpture originates from its similarity to an art work by an american serial killer jeffrey dahmer. after abusing and executing his male victims he would pose the bodies and take polaroid photos of them.
the controversy being did bourgeois come on the pose similar to the body in one of dahmers polaroids, through the creative process or did she view the dahmer photos and use them as creative inspiration. and if she was referencing dahmers polaroids what was her intended message.
the sculpture is said to be an exact copy of the way jeffrey dahmer posed one of his victims, though in the photo he made of one of his victims the elbows stick out at side with the hands near the arm pits and the torso is bent so the knees are touching the bed the body is posed on and the lower legs are slightly touching at the feet. both of these positions are unlike the position of the arms and legs in louise bourgeois sculpture.
unless there is another dahmer polaroid i've not seen which shows the body or another in the exact same pose as the bourgeois sculpture.
there do exist sculptures by bourgeois of the same body that are closer representation of the arch of hysteria, they seem to of been to have been made from the same master cast that the more controversial piece was made from.
the same master cast can be used to make multiple molds, which while fresh and soft can be repositioned . it looks as though she used the master cast for the pieces with the classic arch of hysteria pose and then exaggerated the mould further to come up with the piece that looks as though she was inspired by jeffrey dahmers photo of one of his victims.
some of bourgeois other art work also represents fragments of human bodies. one piece titled janus fleuri shows two cock heads severed from their shafts, reattached back to back, as a visual pun on the roman two headed god of the gateways.
another theme in her art work being flayed skins, one piece shows a what seems to be a flayed penis with its skin draped back over it like a dress or it might be flayed female genitalia dressing it. and there are the wet suits that might just be wet suits but could considering her other sculptures be mistaken for headless, handless and footless human epidermis flayed from their bodies.
this dismemberment theme appears over and over in her ouvre.
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