Louise Bourgeois Essay

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One of the pieces from the Dia Beacon that I found particularly intriguing was Louise Bourgeois’ piece “Crouching Spider”. Standing nearly 10 feet tall, the spider fits snugly in the museum between a naturally lit window and an exposed brick wall. A beautiful shade of black and bronze, Bourgeois’ highly representational sculpture captures the monstrous yet gentle likeness of its original subject with a heavy dense core with eight legs aggressively spiraling outwards with sharp needle-like spindles attached at the end of these legs. This in combination with the spider’s impossibly huge scale and intangible sense of poise lends the sculpture as well as its environment an innumerable level of significance. In Destruction of the Father / Reconstruction of the Father: Writings and Interviews, Louise Bourgeois discusses that in all her years of making art of her subjects have found their inspiration within her early childhood and relationship with her parents (Bernadac, pg.1). When learning about Bourgeois’ upbringing as the daughter of two weavers in the tapestry restoration business, the reasons behind the manifestation of the spider became more apparent. In an interview Bourgeois explains, “The spiders were an ode to my mother. She was a tapestry woman, and like a spider, was a weaver. She protected me and was my best friend.” (Cooke page 1). In the same way Bourgeois cites her mother as a positive figure in her life inspiring her work, she notes her Father as equally important but in the converse. Conflicts in her household growing up, mainly involving her father's extramarital affairs with his live-in mistress are the driving force between many of her works. It is in this compromise and tension between both extremes that I believe the underlying strength of Louise’s Bourgeois’ “Crouching Spider” lies. The spider is reserved yet present and aloof and mysterious but

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