Louise Bourgeois’s art pieces—especially the enormous spider—have been exhibited in museums around the world. For the convenience of the dissemination of art, there is a dangerous tendency to oversimplify artists’ personalities and spirits. Although artists and their works can gain recognition and adoration in the process of dissemination, their creations can also be trivialized and vulgarized. When I think of Bourgeois, I cannot help recalling the image of the gigantic spider, which has become an actual tourist attraction and a celebrated place to take photos. Whether it was because I personally reject the idea of the spectacle and those sorts of intellectual games or I falsely assumed that I already knew her, I had neglected the work of this legendary old lady for a long time.
Women artists, seemingly, are predestined to be neglected. But a woman artist also can find room to thrive, as long as she has a heart full of secrets and an inner desire for self-expression.
My first time encountering the world of Bourgeois was at the gallery Hauser & Wirth in London. In a dim room inside the old building, a couple of art works and a video piece were presented in utter silence. I was deeply touched by the solitude created by the suffocating tranquility and encountered some of Bourgeois’s small but amazing art pieces. I realized that she and I have something in common, inspiring an emotional curiosity about this famous female artist.
Another time, in the Tate Modern’s enormous Turbine Hall, I encountered the famous spider, Maman (1999), the largest version Bourgeois produced. The exhibition layout was quite interesting, with the gigantic spider serving as a kind of dome, hovering over several monumental towers, I Do, I Undo, and I Redo (all 1999–2000). I was overwhelmed. I always regarded the size of a work as part of its artistic language in which appropriateness is the ultimate pursuit, not largeness. That huge vessel overwhelmed me, and I could feel the consistent but restrained pains contained within it.
Contemporary art creation embraces the possibilities of an enormous new scale of exhibition space. In the past, art production was on the scale of the artist’s studio or workshop.