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Series Title: Ode to My Mother

Untitled

1995

Louise Bourgeois

(American, 1911–2010)
publisher

Editions du Solstice

printer

Harlan & Weaver

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Culture
America
Medium
etching and drypoint
Support
Dieux Donné handmade wove paper
Measurements
Platemark: 17.6 x 12.6 cm (6 15/16 x 4 15/16 in.); Sheet: 29.7 x 29.8 cm (11 11/16 x 11 3/4 in.)
Credit Line
Dr. Gerard and Phyllis Seltzer Fund 1999.118.4
Edition
35/45
Copyright
© The Easton Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
This artwork is known to be under copyright.
Location
Not on view
Print

Description

Louise Bourgeois uses art to express personal concerns and obsessions. One of the dominant themes of her work is her own youth, which she considers a magical, mysterious, and dramatic time. Many of her deeply symbolic sculptures, drawings, and etchings address her childhood relationship with her parents. In Ode to My Mother, the spider, an insect known for entrapping victims in its web, serves for Bourgeois as a caring mother figure, protecting her offspring from harm. These nine illustrations, which were issued in a portfolio accompanied by poetic text in French and English, capture the committed but delicate love between daughter and mother. Both Bourgeois and her mother, whom she called her best friend, repaired tapestries in the family business. Like spiders, they were weavers. Bourgeois once described her mother as deliberate, clever, patient, soothing, reasonable, dainty, subtle, indispensable, neat, and useful as a spider.

Untitled

1995

Louise Bourgeois, Editions du Solstice, Harlan & Weaver

(American, 1911–2010)
America

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