[Music] foreign for every artist there is that one artwork that best represents the core of their artistic project for Bourgeois it is the spiders elegant alien and utterly spellbinding Louise Bourgeois Monumental spiders stand amongst the most iconic sculptural series of the 20th century executed in 1996 the present spider is an early iteration of the subject that has become the artist's most enduring and familiar Motif today these towering spiders are key highlights of Museum collections all over the world from the looming iteration Maman outside the Guggenheim Museum bobao and the Tate modern in London to a National Gallery and more despite the looming scale and heft of its bronze silhouette Bourgeois spider is a creature of Life Grace and exquisite uncanny Beauty perfectly balanced on eight delicately arched legs the spider appears poised for motion but to the viewer below her purpose predatory or protective is unknown this tension between Allure and anxiety reflects the concerns at the very heart of Bourgeois project an unflinching investigation of The Human Experience and psyche translated into sculptural form [Music] thank you within Bourgeois highly personal artistic lexicon the spider serves as a stand-in for the artist's own mother who was a skilled tapestry restorer contemplative and methodical the art of weaving and threading tapestries was a cherished and tender act shared between Bourgeois and her mother Josephine her mother's passing in 1932 was a trauma that informed the entirety of Bourgeois artistic practice as she sought to negotiate that loss and their relationship through her sculptural creations emerging in her early drawings of the 1940s Bourgeois did not translate her signature Motif into sculpture until the mid-1990s when they quickly matured spanning greater scales and becoming increasingly intricate and technically complex today these sculptures stand alongside such works as giacometti's Femme De Venice brancusi's mademoiselle pogony and the Nike of samath race representing Bourgeois most important contribution to art history in the sculptural Canon this spider was first exhibited in the year of its execution at the 23rd bianal de sa Paolo which is the second oldest art biennale in the world following Venice there Bourgeois was honored with a dedicated salon and was also the creator of the logo for the biennale a delicate red spiral that is echoed in the spiraling body of the spider's core spider was then acquired by the prestigious that same year and has been held in the collection ever since exhibited both at the Sao Paulo Museum of Modern Art as well as loaned and exhibited extensively across esteemed institutions in South America the artist's singular Masterwork Bourgeois spider is the ultimate Testament to the enduring appeal of her work her Limitless capacity to provoke awe and to capture the most fundamental of human emotions in sculptural form with Magnetic Allure her spider draws us almost irresistibly forward to Glimpse its looming silhouette is to be drawn into the Sheltering Embrace of its long and many legged shadow [Music] [Applause] thank you