Louise Bourgeois: How a great sculptor finally found fame

The spider sculptor started her art early but it wasn’t until the 1980s through to the 2000s that her work was able to blossom, and now she is getting the recognition she deserves, writes William Cook

Louise Bourgeois in her Manhatten studio (Getty)

I can still recall the first time I saw Louise Bourgeois’s enormous spider at London’s Tate Modern, 22 years ago. It was one of those rare moments when a new artwork becomes an instant icon, something timeless and universal, like Monet’s waterlilies or Van Gogh’s sunflowers. I’d never seen anything quite like it. It was sinister yet seductive, frightening yet alluring, not so much like modern art – more like a monster from another world.

The next time I saw Bourgeois’s spider was outside the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. I saw it again a few years later, at the National Convention Centre in Qatar. It seemed to be following me around the globe, like some spooky apparition. Each time I saw it, it felt more potent than before.

Back in 2000, when I first saw that disturbing sculpture, I knew nothing about the woman who made it. It seems I was not alone. Bourgeois had been a familiar figure on the New York art scene for half a century, but in the wider world she remained relatively unknown. It wasn’t until 1982, when she was granted a retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, that her work began to receive recognition beyond the cognoscenti.