Artist: Louise Bourgeois
Year:1999
Media: Bronze, marble, and stainless steel
Size: 895 x 980 x 1160 cm
Location: Guggenheim Museum
Louise Bourgeois was a French American artist who lived from 1911 to 2010. Having a broken family, Bourgeois’s father had an affair with her nanny and saw her mother as unfaithful. Bourgeois assessed this childhood trauma and created Maman at age of 88. She quoted “All of my inspiration comes from childhood.”
Maman translates into ‘mummy’; the largest from her series of spider sculptures. She started this series since 1947 which reveals her childhood. Indeed, we can interpret this work as a tribute to her mother, who repaired tapestries in her husband’s workshop in Paris, and whom the artist looked to when she was a kid. The sculpture, Maman, portrays spinning, weaving, care, and protection from her mom.
Maman