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Lot Essay
Founded in June 2012, The New Foundation Seattle's mission is to strengthen the position of contemporary visual art and its production through concentrated support of individual artistic development through established core programs. The Acquisitions Program will make the work of Seattle artists accessible to significantly larger and more diverse audiences through acquisitions for American museums' permanent collections. The Education Program will strengthen individual artistic development by ensuring both professional and student artists in Seattle have access to education opportunities that will advance their talents and network.
Additionally, The New Foundation Seattle will present public programs that foster the exchange of ideas about art and its role today. These public programs, including workshops, exhibitions and lectures, will allow the Foundation to invite national and international visual art professionals to Seattle to engage in an active exchange of knowledge to audiences based in the Northwest.
"The Spider is an ode to my mother.
She was a tapestry woman.
My mother was my best friend.
She was deliberate, clever, patient, soothing, reasonable, dainty,
subtle, indispensable, neat, and useful as a Spider."
--Louise Bourgeois, 1996
Delicately perched on eight spindly legs, a female spider stands protectively over her offspring, whilst above them hangs a beautiful web containing the body of a fly caught within its silken threads. This dichotomy between maternal love and death, as depicted by the entombed fly, mirrors the difficult familial relationships the artist had with her own parents and the close bond she formed with her mother who died when the artist was just a young woman. Spider Home belongs to an ensemble of works by Bourgeois that has been described by Mieke Bal in Louise Bourgeois' Spider: The Architecture of Art Writing as "a large number of drawings, sculptures, and installations, each representing a huge spider, sometimes in combination with a small one, hovering over a page, a wall, a ceiling, a room....They are intensely figurative, hair-raisingly strong in their effect on the viewer... Yet through the narrativity that inheres to their figurativity and their appeal to mood, they invoke the home, which is where the memories of spiders belong and where little children spin their dreams out of spiders and their webs, webs that catch and enfold whatever comes their way" (M. Bal, Louise Bourgeois' Spider: The Architecture of Art Writing, Chicago & London, 2001, pp. 5-6).
Spider Home is the result of Borgeois's lifelong friendship with Deli Sacilotto, who served as Research Director of Graphicstudio, a university-based atelier in Florida engaged in a unique experiment in art and education. The group is committed to researching traditional and new techniques for the production of limited edition prints and sculptures, many of which are in major museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. This relationship was particularly meaningful to Bourgeois, as the artist herself shared a desire to help younger artists and demonstrated outstanding technical tenacity throughout her career. It is fitting therefore that the proceeds from the sale of Spider Home will be used to support the work of established and emerging artists, a cause that was so close to the artist's own heart.
Additionally, The New Foundation Seattle will present public programs that foster the exchange of ideas about art and its role today. These public programs, including workshops, exhibitions and lectures, will allow the Foundation to invite national and international visual art professionals to Seattle to engage in an active exchange of knowledge to audiences based in the Northwest.
"The Spider is an ode to my mother.
She was a tapestry woman.
My mother was my best friend.
She was deliberate, clever, patient, soothing, reasonable, dainty,
subtle, indispensable, neat, and useful as a Spider."
--Louise Bourgeois, 1996
Delicately perched on eight spindly legs, a female spider stands protectively over her offspring, whilst above them hangs a beautiful web containing the body of a fly caught within its silken threads. This dichotomy between maternal love and death, as depicted by the entombed fly, mirrors the difficult familial relationships the artist had with her own parents and the close bond she formed with her mother who died when the artist was just a young woman. Spider Home belongs to an ensemble of works by Bourgeois that has been described by Mieke Bal in Louise Bourgeois' Spider: The Architecture of Art Writing as "a large number of drawings, sculptures, and installations, each representing a huge spider, sometimes in combination with a small one, hovering over a page, a wall, a ceiling, a room....They are intensely figurative, hair-raisingly strong in their effect on the viewer... Yet through the narrativity that inheres to their figurativity and their appeal to mood, they invoke the home, which is where the memories of spiders belong and where little children spin their dreams out of spiders and their webs, webs that catch and enfold whatever comes their way" (M. Bal, Louise Bourgeois' Spider: The Architecture of Art Writing, Chicago & London, 2001, pp. 5-6).
Spider Home is the result of Borgeois's lifelong friendship with Deli Sacilotto, who served as Research Director of Graphicstudio, a university-based atelier in Florida engaged in a unique experiment in art and education. The group is committed to researching traditional and new techniques for the production of limited edition prints and sculptures, many of which are in major museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. This relationship was particularly meaningful to Bourgeois, as the artist herself shared a desire to help younger artists and demonstrated outstanding technical tenacity throughout her career. It is fitting therefore that the proceeds from the sale of Spider Home will be used to support the work of established and emerging artists, a cause that was so close to the artist's own heart.