The Lady and the Ramp

So it's not surprising that Bourgeois owes her greatest acclaim—at least among the majority of the art public—to one of her creepiest pieces: a 30-foot-tall black spider made from steel and marble. Bourgeois designed the tellingly titled "Maman" ("Mommy" in French) in 1999, and it was cast in parts in 2001. Artistically and personally, the sculpture is rather a grand summation. The spider's pointy, disjointed legs recall Bourgeois's totemlike work of the '40s; the abdomen echoes her '60s biomorphism, and the odd feeling of imprisonment you get when you're under the creature, with legs all around you, continues the claustrophobia of the "Cells." The arachnids (a 2003 "Spider Couple" will greet you in the Guggenheim's atrium) clearly express the simultaneous power and vulnerability of Louise's mother, the cheated-on Mme. Bourgeois. "I hope [people] perceive the intensity of my relationship with her," Bourgeois says. Oh, do we.

Whenever a woman artist has survived in the (still) male-dominated art world long enough to earn a major retrospective, she becomes something of a feminist icon. Sixty years ago, a major leitmotif of the picket-fence-like sculpture "The Blind Leading the Blind" (1949) was women being confined to the home. Many view the 21st-century spiders as a further comment on that social injustice. Moreover, there's the sheer volume of Bourgeois's output. Even allowing for the fact that she's been at it for seven decades, the totality of her work represents a defiance of the art historian Whitney Chadwick's observation that women's "attempts to juggle domestic responsibilities [Bourgeois has raised two sons] with artistic production have often resulted in smaller bodies of work, and often works smaller in scale, than those produced by male contemporaries." Finally, she was belatedly—if not rediscovered, at least elevated to a status commensurate with her talent in the 1970s, concurrent with the rise of feminism in the art world. The feminist activist Arlene Raven said flatly, " 'Feminist' is what Bourgeois's art is and always has been." Bourgeois herself says, "There are inequities in our society between men and women, but they have never kept me from saying or doing what I want." In a way, Bourgeois can't help being a feminist. Her charmingly gritty persona and her long, long career make her an exemplar for women whether she wants to be or not. But the complex craft and deep emotional impact of her sculpture make her a great artist for everybody—male or female—with an inclination to look.

© 2008