Found Exhortation

The other day, I went to see the Louise Bourgeois retrospective at the Hirshhorn.  The works are a combination of exquisite technique and in-your-face, challenging emotions.  I had a friend who raged at me once because I had created a piece that was radically, polemically feminist.  “That’s not art; art is only meant to be beautiful and aesthetic, not to be political,” said my friend.  Although he could not have questioned Bourgeois as an artist — her technique is too good — he might still have raged at it.  (The high school group being shown art on a field trip, while I was at the exhibit, was scurried through a room or two, much to my amusement).

Seeing the exhibit led me to think of the purported purpose of left-handed tantric practices, which are meant to challenge us, turn us upside-down and inside out, and question what we recognize as the divine.