The Good Mother (detail), 2003
(Picture: © The Easton Foundation/VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2021. Photo: Christopher Burke)The French-American artist Louise Bourgeois is most famous for her spiders, like the vast steel arachnid that bestrode the bridge over the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern when it opened in 2000. There are several in the Hayward’s new show, subtitled The Woven Child, and they are intimately linked to its main theme: Bourgeois’ obsession with textiles and fabric in the final two decades before her death in 2010.
She always linked spiders with maternity (the Tate work is called Maman, French for mother) and specifically her own mum. For Bourgeois, the spider “is a repairer” and her mother restored antique tapestries. The young Louise would help her out, drawing in the missing bits of damaged textiles, before her father sold them in his Paris gallery.
