Bronze, stainless steel, and marble
927 x 891 x 1024 cm
Photo source: Wikimedia Commons
I’ve been thinking about Louise Bourgeois these days, about the ways in which she suggests mental and emotional strength in Maman (1999).
She came up with the idea of giant spiders in the late nineties. She did Maman in 1999. Maman is a weaver, organic, and female (holding her eggs under her belly), and yet she is large and menacing, and her legs crush the earth like the mechanical, inorganic limbs of a robot. It is the ultimate portrayal of fear and vulnerability and mixing of categories: male-female, organic-inorganic, doing-destroying-mending. Bourgeois talked of how spiders restore their webs if they are damaged and how she, the artist, felt “caught in a web of fear.” She was, in fact, both a creature caught in a spider’s web of fear, and the spider which vanquishes this fear by mending its vulnerable cobweb.
The Art Dive 
Love this art.
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I do, too!
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Standing underneath it gave me both a feeling of security and it is a bit scary at the same time. Fantastic piece of art!
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Mira Tudor, Thank you for the image and information. Isn’t it thought-provoking that so many spiders are beneficial invertebrates and web-building artists and yet so often, to paraphrase Shakespeare, the poisonous bites live after them and their pest control and silken webs are interred with their exoskeletons?
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Thank you both. A sculpture like this makes you wonder about how sometimes while striving to creation beauty we defend creative activities to the point where we push away other important things in our lives.
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