The Myth of the Spider - Protection and Threat

The spider is a weaver. A master weave. And the spider is often portrayed as a female femme fatal. The black widow, being a most famous one.

A weaver is full of symbolism. A female weaver of Homer's mythical epic is Penelope, the wife of Odysseus. Every night she wove a burial shroud for her father in law, promising to choose a suitor once it was finished. But then, every morning she unraveled her weaving.

The sculpture artist Louis Bourgeois brought the spider new recognition and a firm place in the art world. Her spiders sell for millions. At the DIA Art Foundation, the description of the Crouching Spider elevates the spider to something pretentiously existential, focusing in part on the qualities that the spider inherently possesses as a weaver. "This dichotomy of protection and threat expresses Bourgeois's ambivalent idea of maternity."

Crouching Spider (2003) Loius Bourgeois. DIA Art Foundation. Photograph taken Jan 2017