Claire Cowling is a first-year student and is participating in Maureen Korp’s FYSM Special Studies in Art History – Visual Literacy. Throughout the term, students will seek out Ottawa’s arts scene and critique the good, the bad and the ugly according to a set of criteria they discuss in the classroom.
The Lost Spider is the third in a series of student submissions that critique Ottawa-area public art to be included in This Week @ FASS.
The Lost Spider
By Claire Cowling
Known to most people in Ottawa as “The Spider,” Maman by Louise Bourgeois, is a free-standing structure placed only meters from the entrance to the National Gallery of Canada on the plaza at the corner of Rue Saint Patrick and Sussex Drive.
Maman is a very open composition. People are able to walk underneath its underbelly, which contains a sac holding 26 pure white marble eggs. The work is cast in bronze, approximately 30 feet tall. Maman is realistically proportioned to resemble a daddy-long-legs spider. The eight bronze legs are placed four and four about the body in the middle (see Figure. 2). They were cast in separate pieces and welded together. The welding seams are quite evident, giving the legs depth and character.
There is no available identification plaque, so the purpose of the work is unclear. Its sheer size makes it unforgettable. Moreover, in its present site, it creates a barrier, which serves to keep young (or old) skateboarders off the plaza.
When I first saw Maman, I immediately thought of nature because a spider is a wild creature and its visible eggs in the egg sac indicate motherhood. However, because Maman was not made for the National Gallery’s plaza the sculpture becomes an example of bad art. Maman is the sixth and last in the series of environmental sculptures created by the artist.4
In Ottawa, Maman has been placed in the very center. The sculpture is surrounded by buildings with very square edges. This counters the effect of the sculpture’s rounded legs and body. There is no relationship of line or form of the sculpture to the buildings around it that form Maman’s environment because there are no 90 degree angles in nature.
Ottawa is a beautiful city, one comparable to some European cities. However, at the site where “The Spider” stands, the sculpture blocks the view of the magnificent church across the street, the National Gallery itself and even the Parliament buildings. A park would be a more suitable environment for this spider, like any spider.