spider sense and puppy love

Louise Bourgeois. Maman. 1999. Bronze, steel, and marble; height 30'.

Jeff Koons. Puppy. Installation at Schloss Arolsen, Germany during Documenta IX, 1992. Live flowering plants, earth, geotextile, and internal irrigation system. 

Sculptures and installations take art to another level, or rather dimension. You walk around them, stare up at them, walk through them; there is a much stronger interaction and engagement with the viewer than a two-dimensional piece has to offer. Both of the works above are sculptures that have toured the world, engaged a large audience on various continents, and are larger than life renditions of common creatures with interesting concepts behind them.

Maman, which is French for mother, is a 30-foot spider accompanied by a smaller spider simply named Spider. This sculpture can be rather daunting, for arachnophobia is rather common. However the artist's intent is the exact opposite. Bourgeois compared a mother from the view of a child to a spider. Both are "awesomely tall, protective, patient, and skilled." Immediately after viewing the photo of the sculpture and discovering the title to be Maman, I thought of "The Other Mother" from Coraline. I find this to be a more accurate rendition of my mother =P The Other Mother is also referred to as a beldam, an ugly old woman. She collects children and sucks the life out of them. Maman and "The Other Mother" are two mothers depicted as spiders with very different perspectives. 

You can't help but love Puppy. It's a West Highlander Terrier made of flowers! Take the Caesar dog food commercials; the dog is so cute you have to buy the food (and the dog). Why do we buy flowers? Why in the world is there a career fashioned simply to serve bouquets of flowers? We, as a society, are suckers for that which we deam cute. And that was a major part of the concept behind Puppy. Koons took the idea that the more sophisticated "high art" admirer is supposed to frown upon the sentimental and adorable somewhat "simplictic art and blew it into giant proportion. How absurd of us to allow vanity to overwhelm?