Sculpted by Love and Trauma | Louise Bourgeois’ Iconic Spider IV

S tirring with the vigor of imminent action, Louise Bourgeois’ massively scaled Spider IV swells with a palpable energy that belies the inherent stasis of its cast bronze form. Conceived in 1996 and cast just one year later, this affecting sculpture is a dynamic iteration on what has become the most celebrated series of the artist’s career and arguably her signature theme. More so than any other cast iterations of the spider form, Spider IV bears a complex large configuration characterized by dynamic coiled limbs and one gracefully extended bent leg. The present work is further distinguished by its presence in the iconic photograph captured by Peter Bellamy, in which Bourgeois wraps her arms lovingly around the spider’s two wiry hind legs. Reproduced in nearly every publication on the artist, this portrait has become synonymous with her work - and subsequently, it is this version of the spider, Spider IV, that has become her most iconic, recognizable, and perpetually enduring iteration of her beloved form. Spider IV broadcasts an inimitable vitality, at once sentimental and foreboding, nostalgic and powerful. For Bourgeois, art was more than just a means of expression; rather it was a way of carving a place out for herself in the world. The metaphors and symbolic figurations that populate her oeuvre navigate the thin divide between several dualities: the self and the other, nurture and destruction, love and abandonment.

At once poignant, powerful, menacing and nostalgic, Bourgeois' Spider assumes full command of its surroundings, its legs advancing, probing and coiling in repose, suggestive of both action and contemplation. Emerging first in the ephemeral environment of her early drawings, Bourgeois' Spider eventually towered triumphantly over the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern in 2000 with the gargantuan Maman of 1999. The resurgence of the Spider in sculptural form in Bourgeois’ work of the mid 1990s was momentous and revelatory, attesting to the primacy of this frightening yet fragile creature in the artist’s imagination. Bourgeois’ expressive and potent arachnid also looms large as an icon of modern sculpture, with several iterations of the Spider held in prestigious international private and museum collections.

Images of the spider recur throughout Bourgeois’ work, constituting a prolonged series of drawings, sculptures, prints and installations, each representing a large creature hovering over a page, a wall, a ceiling a room, or above one of the artist’s architectural Cell installations. Spiders are powerfully evocative, sparking primal emotions ranging from fear to comfort, and for Bourgeois, they spoke of childhood and a narrative of home, filled with woven webs of past memories informing her present. In a text published for her 1998 European travelling exhibition, the artist related an extensive dream narrative about visiting a house that is in fact her subconscious.

Within this house of memory and reflection, the Spider is the other being, acting as both a threatening predator and a nurturing presence fostering creativity. As the Spider wove, so Bourgeois drew and sculpted. In biographical terms, the Bourgeois family business was to restore antique tapestries, so the narrative aspect of art was a core concept that Bourgeois used to potent effect with her metaphorical mother, the Spider. “An eight-legged shadow will loom over me. I wouldn’t be afraid though...The spider would...begin to sew, for me and forever, a huge web to tuck me in. She’d seal all the openings, block all the doors, repair all the torn fabric, line the stairs with downy threads to soften potential falls, fill all the empty corners. She’d stay here forever, by my side…” (Louise Bourgeois quoted in Exh. Cat., London, Serpentine Gallery, Louise Bourgeois, 1998, p. 10)

The maternal, nurturing character of the Spider is unmistakable in Bourgeois’ dream-play, and becomes explicit in a text published with a suite of nine Spider etchings from 1955 titled Ode à Ma Mère: “The friend (the spider - why the spider?) because my best friend was my mother and she was deliberate, clever, patient, soothing, reasonable, dainty, subtle, indispensable, neat, and as useful as a spider. She could also defend herself, and me…” (Louise Bourgeois quoted in Robert Storr, Intimate Geometries: The Art and Life of Louise Bourgeois, New York, 2016, p. 545) The final allusion to a need for protection hints at the very contradictory emotions and impulses of this most complex artist, all emanating from the basic trauma of her early life, which she filtered through her art to construct a mythic legend that permeated her aesthetic psyche. Outwardly, the Bourgeois family was a model of gentility and lived comfortably in their residences in Paris and the countryside. Yet, the inner life of the Bourgeois home seethed with marital tensions that were not well-hidden from the children. Their tutor was a young woman who was also their father’s mistress, a situation reluctantly accepted by their mother, who eventually died after a protracted illness. The profound and complex psychological effect of this marital triangle with its underlying cross-currents of betrayal and fidelity has become the accepted ‘myth’ around which Bourgeois’ artistic identity has been constructed, both by critics and the artist herself.

While Spider IV and its illustrious family of arachnids of different shapes and sizes are exceptionally personal works, Bourgeois’ art still retains a deeply mysterious and subtle air, hinting at reserves of experience and memory that may mirror both the artist and the viewer’s perception. In writing of Bourgeois’ rich metaphorical landscape, Jerry Gorovoy commented; “Through shape and line, material and texture, Bourgeois is able to give a palpable specificity to her memories. More than just marking time, and nostalgic reminiscing, Bourgeois wants through her sculpture to re-create the past, to have total recall to the emotions, to analyze the event, to control it, to correct it, and finally to forgive and forget it...Bourgeois’ sculptures mark a collection of traumas, fears, anxieties, resentments, and unfulfilled desires which through her sculptures she is able to exorcise.” (Exh. Cat., Yokohama Museum of Art, Louise Bourgeois: Homesickness, 1997, n.p.)

露 易絲・布爾喬亞創作的巨型《蜘蛛 IV》蓄勢待發，渾身鼓動著力量，栩栩如生，令人忘記它本身只是靜止不動的鑄銅作品。這件充滿感染力的銅鑄蜘蛛於1996年構思，一年後澆鑄成型，藝術家反覆運用的蜘蛛形象成為她的標誌主題，成就了其創作生涯中最受歡迎的系列。相比其餘鑄銅蜘蛛的形態，《蜘蛛 IV》擁有複雜巨大的結構，盤曲起來的足節飽含動態，其中一條彎曲的腿優雅地伸展。本作因曾現身於彼得．貝拉米拍攝的經典相片，更顯與眾不同，相中的布爾喬亞用雙臂深情地圈起蜘蛛兩條結實的後腿。那幅相片幾乎出現在每一本談及布爾喬亞的著作中，儼如其作品的代名詞，正因如此，《蜘蛛 IV》這一版的雕塑成為她最具代表性、最為人熟知的作品，將她最鍾愛的蜘蛛造型永遠保存下來。《蜘蛛 IV》散發獨一無二的生命力，既顯得多愁善感，又潛藏著不詳的氣息，籠罩著哀傷之餘又蘊含力量。對布爾喬亞而言，藝術不僅是表達手法，更是她開闢屬於自己立足之地的方式。她作品所包含的隱喻和象徵，一直游走於自我與他者、養育與破壞、愛與棄等微妙的二元關係之間。

布爾喬亞的蜘蛛存在感強烈，姿態充滿力量，狀甚可怖威嚴，卻又散發一種淡淡的哀傷氣息，牠完全掌控周遭的環境，八條腿沉著探路、前行、盤纏，可見牠一邊思考一邊行動。蜘蛛的形象最先短暫出現在她早年的素描中，最終演變成她於1999年創作的巨型雕塑《媽媽》，並於翌年聳立於泰特現代藝術館的渦輪大廳。蜘蛛以雕塑形式再次出現在布爾喬亞於九十年代中創作的作品，可見在藝術家的想像中，這種可怕卻脆弱的生物對她有至高無上的特殊意義。布爾喬亞的蜘蛛巨大強勢，富有表現力，也是現代雕塑中無人不曉的標誌，蜘蛛系列的多件作品現為多所國際知名博物館和私人機構收藏。

蜘蛛的形象在布爾喬亞的作品反覆出現，構成繪畫、雕塑、版畫、裝置等歷時多年的系列主題，而蜘蛛多以巨大形象示人，徘徊於頁面、牆身、天花、房間或者像建築裝置《牢籠》一樣的結構。蜘蛛非常容易引起聯想，激發從恐懼到寬慰的原始情感。對布爾喬亞而言，蜘蛛意味著童年和關於家的敘述，這個家佈滿由過去回憶交織成的蜘網，塑造藝術家現在的藝術。1998年布爾喬亞在歐洲舉行巡迴展覽，在為該展覽撰寫的文章中，她講述在夢中參觀代表其潛意識的房子。在那所充滿回憶和反思的房子中，蜘蛛是另一種存在，既是有威脅的獵食者，也是為孕育創造力而出現的養育角色，蜘蛛結網的同時，布爾喬亞就創作繪畫和雕塑。根據藝術家的生平記載，布爾喬亞一家經營修復古董掛毯的生意，所以用藝術敘事是她的核心理念，務求令作品中隱喻母親的蜘蛛帶有震撼效果。「有八條腿的影子在我頭上晃動，但我不會害怕……蜘蛛會……開始縫紉，永遠為我結出巨網，把我安頓好。她會封好所有開口，堵住所有的門，修補破損的布料，在樓梯鋪上絨毛線，讓我萬一摔倒也不會太疼，填滿所有空的角落。她會永遠留在這裡，就在我身邊……」（引述路易絲．布爾喬亞，《路易絲．布爾喬亞》展覽圖錄，倫敦，蛇形美術館，1998年，頁10）

在布爾喬亞腦海上演的夢境中，蜘蛛的確擁有母性和養育的天性，1995年她創作了一套九張的蜘蛛蝕刻版畫《歌頌我的母親》，隨此作發表的文章更能確認她認定的蜘蛛特性：「朋友（蜘蛛——為何是蜘蛛？），因為我母親是我最好的朋友，她謹慎、聰明、有耐性、使人安心、通情達理、優雅、敏銳、不可或缺、整潔，像蜘蛛一樣有用，她還可以保護自己和我……」（引述路易絲．布爾喬亞，載於羅伯特．司鐸撰，《親密幾何：露易絲・布爾喬亞的藝術人生》，紐約，2016年，頁545）。藝術家的內心極為複雜，所展現的矛盾情感和衝動正是她需要保護的最後暗示，這一切都源自她早年生活的創傷，她卻用藝術濾走傷痛，建構滲透出其美學精神的神話故事。表面上，布爾喬亞一家是從容優雅的模範，在巴黎和鄉郊的大宅過著舒適的生活。然而，他們的婚姻關係十分緊張，而且孩子都對此一清二楚。孩子的年輕家庭老師成為父親的情婦，雖然母親不情願，但也得無奈接受，最後因長期疾病去世。這段三角關係對藝術家產生複雜而深遠的心理影響，當中潛藏背叛與忠貞交匯的橫流，變成大眾認知藝術家的「迷思」，連藝評人和藝術家本人都圍繞這個「迷思」確立其藝術定位。

儘管《蜘蛛 IV》和以不同大小形狀的蜘蛛為題的一系列作品是非常個人化的表達，但布爾喬亞的藝術仍保持一種神秘的微妙氣息，意謂作品包含的經驗和記憶，或許能同時反映藝術家和觀眾的看法。傑里．戈羅沃伊撰文論及布爾喬亞作品中豐富的隱喻時，曾評價道：「布爾喬亞透過形狀、線條、物料、質感，具體地將她的回憶變成可以觸摸的實體。她的作品遠不止於標記時間和緬懷過去，她想透過作品重組過去，勾起以往所有情感，分析事件，支配事件，更正事件，以至最終可以原諒和忘記……布爾喬亞的雕塑系列象徵創傷、恐懼、焦慮、怨恨、夙願未償，但憑藉創作雕塑，她可以釋懷了。」（《路易絲．布爾喬亞：思鄉症》展覽圖錄，橫濱美術館，1997年，無頁數）