Dia Beacon Reaction

Spider -- Louise Bourgeois

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The work I chose from the Dia Beacon museum is called Spider, and was completed in the year 1997 by Louise Bourgeois. Quite obviously the artist was French [born in Paris in 1911], and emigrated to New York at the age of 27, but did not become widely known or successful until the early 70’s. Bourgeois is acknowledged for her frequent use of many different mediums, including rubber, wood, stone, metal, fabrics, etc. Bourgeois chose to exhibit her works at the Dia Beacon museum in the “attic” – the unfinished, dark creepy rooms upstairs. The entire structure of the spider is made of metal, and the shape is modeled around that of a large cage-like object. Basically is just a very menacing and large figure that appears to hover over the viewer. I mainly picked this work because it scared the hell out of me when I walked into the room. The monster spider symbolizes a protective mother, as well as a vicious, terrifying predator. For some reason I tend to love this type of work, because even though it frightened me, there is quite a deep meaning behind it. I love the weird and scary angles of the giant legs, and the fact that it is much taller than the average human is also interesting because it makes it that much more intimidating. All in all it turned out to be one of my favorite pieces in the whole museum.