Lynn M. Somers is an Independent Scholar and Adjunct Assistant Professor of art history at Drew University, USA.

• Introduction0.1 Art and the Aesthetics of Play 0.2 Art and Transitional Objects 1: Femme Maison and the Materiality of Home (1945–1949)1.1 Affects of Home Space1.2 Metaphors of Body and Home1.3 Home and the Material Unconscious1.4 Environments of Estrangement1.5 Unbearable Objects2: Personages: Making, Transition, and Use (1947–1955)2.1 Paradoxical Objects2.2 Matter, Making, and Materiality 2.3 Sculpture Embodied2.4 Sculpture as Theoretical Object2.5 Objects for Losing One’s Balance3: Unruly Objects (1960–1968)3.1 Pliable Stuff 3.2 Bound and Unbound3.3 How to Undo an Object, or the Aesthetics of Undoing3.4 How to Disturb the Order of Things3.5 How to Use a Sculptural Object4: Janus: Mothers, Ambivalence, and Play (1968–1989)4.1 The Beginning(and End)of Softness4.2 Paradoxes of Madness and Reason4.3 War in the Nursery4.4 Ruthless Love4.5 Objects of Play and Imagination4.6 Not Less than Everything5: Cells: Evocative Object Worlds (1990–2000)5.1 Containers and Containing Spaces5.2 Cells as Bodily Spaces5.3 Hidden Worlds5.4 Collections, or Places, for Getting Lost5.5 The Value of NonsenseConclusionIndex

How can a work of art be at once completely an object and not merely an object? Somers shows, thrillingly, how works by Louise Bourgeois evoke the transitional objects that mediate our earliest encounters with the world. Transformative Objects is at once an incisive study of a major artist, a lucid introduction to object relations theory, and a richly immersive experience in its own right.

Lynn M. Somers is an Independent Scholar and Adjunct Assistant Professor of art history at Drew University, USA.

• Introduction0.1 Art and the Aesthetics of Play 0.2 Art and Transitional Objects 1: Femme Maison and the Materiality of Home (1945–1949)1.1 Affects of Home Space1.2 Metaphors of Body and Home1.3 Home and the Material Unconscious1.4 Environments of Estrangement1.5 Unbearable Objects2: Personages: Making, Transition, and Use (1947–1955)2.1 Paradoxical Objects2.2 Matter, Making, and Materiality 2.3 Sculpture Embodied2.4 Sculpture as Theoretical Object2.5 Objects for Losing One’s Balance3: Unruly Objects (1960–1968)3.1 Pliable Stuff 3.2 Bound and Unbound3.3 How to Undo an Object, or the Aesthetics of Undoing3.4 How to Disturb the Order of Things3.5 How to Use a Sculptural Object4: Janus: Mothers, Ambivalence, and Play (1968–1989)4.1 The Beginning(and End)of Softness4.2 Paradoxes of Madness and Reason4.3 War in the Nursery4.4 Ruthless Love4.5 Objects of Play and Imagination4.6 Not Less than Everything5: Cells: Evocative Object Worlds (1990–2000)5.1 Containers and Containing Spaces5.2 Cells as Bodily Spaces5.3 Hidden Worlds5.4 Collections, or Places, for Getting Lost5.5 The Value of NonsenseConclusionIndex

How can a work of art be at once completely an object and not merely an object? Somers shows, thrillingly, how works by Louise Bourgeois evoke the transitional objects that mediate our earliest encounters with the world. Transformative Objects is at once an incisive study of a major artist, a lucid introduction to object relations theory, and a richly immersive experience in its own right.

Lynn M. Somers is an Independent Scholar and Adjunct Assistant Professor of art history at Drew University, USA.

• Introduction0.1 Art and the Aesthetics of Play 0.2 Art and Transitional Objects 1: Femme Maison and the Materiality of Home (1945–1949)1.1 Affects of Home Space1.2 Metaphors of Body and Home1.3 Home and the Material Unconscious1.4 Environments of Estrangement1.5 Unbearable Objects2: Personages: Making, Transition, and Use (1947–1955)2.1 Paradoxical Objects2.2 Matter, Making, and Materiality 2.3 Sculpture Embodied2.4 Sculpture as Theoretical Object2.5 Objects for Losing One’s Balance3: Unruly Objects (1960–1968)3.1 Pliable Stuff 3.2 Bound and Unbound3.3 How to Undo an Object, or the Aesthetics of Undoing3.4 How to Disturb the Order of Things3.5 How to Use a Sculptural Object4: Janus: Mothers, Ambivalence, and Play (1968–1989)4.1 The Beginning(and End)of Softness4.2 Paradoxes of Madness and Reason4.3 War in the Nursery4.4 Ruthless Love4.5 Objects of Play and Imagination4.6 Not Less than Everything5: Cells: Evocative Object Worlds (1990–2000)5.1 Containers and Containing Spaces5.2 Cells as Bodily Spaces5.3 Hidden Worlds5.4 Collections, or Places, for Getting Lost5.5 The Value of NonsenseConclusionIndex

How can a work of art be at once completely an object and not merely an object? Somers shows, thrillingly, how works by Louise Bourgeois evoke the transitional objects that mediate our earliest encounters with the world. Transformative Objects is at once an incisive study of a major artist, a lucid introduction to object relations theory, and a richly immersive experience in its own right.