The spider's web; Louise Bourgeois and her art.

The sculptor Louise Bourgeois just turned ninety, but she still works six days a week. On Sunday she rests, because that's her assistant's day off. This leaves her at loose ends, however, so for the past thirty years she has held a Sunday salon in her brownstone on West Twentieth Street. The attendees are mostly young artists, who have come to show her their work. Last spring, I went to one of these gatherings. There were fourteen visitors, who sat in hard chairs in a small, peeling parlor. Once we had all signed release forms -- to compound everyone's nervousness, the salons are videotaped -- Bourgeois materialized in the doorway, a tiny woman in a pink blouse, black ...