The piece Mama
That Louise made in 1999
The spider expanded to the size of an enormous room, almost like the maternal womb
Carrying 18 marble eggs in its body
So the Eternal Thread that the Long Museum
And it consists of 40 pieces
Starting in the late 1940s all the way to the last decade of her life
I was Louise’s assistant for 30 years
I met her in 1980
She was born in Paris to a family of tapestry restores
She ended up studying mathematics and philosophy in Sorbonne
But when her mother died in 1932, she became very depressed
She then left Sorbonne, and began studying art
She met an American art historian in Paris in 1938
She came to New York
To be a good wife, to be a good mother to 3 sons
And to pursue an artistic career
Louise’s father famously had a number of mistresses
Including at one point when Louise was about 12 a girl named Sadie was teaching Louise English
And all the time Louise was taking care of her mother
Her father was in Paris with a number of mistresses, I think it was an agonizing situation for Louise
Much of the work from the 1940s to the mid-1980s was really made
Under of her feeling of hostility and rage towards her father
Companied by unspoken love
The early personages were carved out of wood
She said they were like people that she missed or left behind
She wanted you to come in and see them
Like you’re entering in a room, like a party full of people
The work Henriette is an emblem of a leg, a prosthetic limb
It was owe to her sister Henriette who had a bad leg
In the mid-1980s to probably around 1990s
Louise began to make a shift in a motivation and impulses towards her mother
Calling to her mother to help her in her distress and her frailty
I think she thought the spider connected to her mother who is a weaver
And that she thought spiders are benevolent, they eat mosquitos
They are good presents to her
Louise developed this form of cell around 1991
Cell is like a prison cell
But it’s also the body
She was a prisoner to her emotions
To Louise it was a metaphor
Seduction of the other person of the love object
The Spider Cell in 1997
A series which is actually the only cell that Louise made that incorporates the spider motif
That’s been decked with personal elements from Louise life
Like bottle of Shalimar perfume which she loved to wear, fragments of tapestry
She had a life-long fear, the fear of abandonment
She doesn’t want to be separated from the person she loves
Couple here had to do with, it’s coming from a woman’s hair which is spiraling around a man
These 2 people will be together forever and they’re inseparable
She was very intense, very emotional
But when she was working, she was very happy
She stopped going to her shows
And she would prefer to devote her energy on the work
So I made a deal, I said that you do the work
And I will deal with the art world
10 am is when you come to me
And it’s my hands and Louise’s hands
Because I would always go pick her up at 10 and then we start the day of work
She did work to the end of her life
Because the inflexion she had was insomnia
So she would stay up for 3 days, working and working
And she would sort of crash
She was like I’m not gonna be around
You have the work
And the work is more me than my personal physical presence