Louise Bourgeois often said art was the force that steadied her, a lifeline she relied on to confront anxiety and illuminate truth. At the Phoenix Convention Center, that belief rises 90 feet into the air, greeting thousands of visitors with a message as bold as the sculpture itself.
A massive mirror—so monumental that the West Building was constructed around it—anchors the space with Bourgeois' declaration reflected across its spiderwebbed surface: “art is a guaranty of sanity." The phrase is not just an inscription; it is an invitation to pause, reflect, and step momentarily into the artist's world.
“Art gave her access to her unconscious and to deeper levels of truth," said Jerry Gorovoy, Bourgeois' longtime assistant. “She could make sense of why she was doing the things she was doing and feeling the way she was feeling."
It's an artwork that stops people in their tracks. Its dramatic scale, the illusion of a giant spiderweb stretching across the mirror, and the stark clarity of Bourgeois' words make it one of the most iconic and photographed locations at the Phoenix Convention Center.
The spider
Although the spider motif first appeared in small drawings in 1947, Bourgeois didn't return to it until almost fifty years later with her first Spider sculpture in 1994. The subsequent series grew in scale and complexity, and includes one of her most famous sculptures, the iconic, 30-foot-tall “Maman," which was unveiled at Tate Modern in 2000.
For Bourgeois, the spider was more than a creature, it was a metaphor. It represented her mother, her sense of repair, and her own creative process. The spider spins a world from its body; Bourgeois saw her artistic practice the same way, Gorovoy said.
“I came from a family of repairers," Bourgeois said in a 1998 interview. “The spider is a repairer. If you bash into the web of a spider, she doesn't get mad. She weaves and repairs it."
A monumental welcome to Phoenix
“Art Is a Guaranty of Sanity" stands as one of Bourgeois' final large-scale commissions. The work's inscription—“art is a guaranty of sanity"—is not only a statement but a window into the way Bourgeois understood her own life. Art, she believed, helped her make sense of her fears, reconcile contradictions, and confront truths that were otherwise too overwhelming, Gorovoy said.
The sculpture's dramatic scale evokes the same sense of wonder as her giant spiders. Visitors often find themselves caught in an Alice-in-Wonderland moment as they are dwarfed by the towering form and drawn close by the mirrored surface, Gorovoy said. Bourgeois incorporated mirrors in her work throughout her career, from her early Personage sculptures of the 1940s to her later “Cell" installations, such as “Cell (Eyes and Mirrors)" from 1989–93. For her, mirrors symbolized perception, self-knowledge, and the delicate dance of looking and being seen.
In the Phoenix installation, the mirror activates the space: guests become part of the artwork, woven into the shifting reflections that surround the bold, poetic inscription.
Visit the artwork in the Phoenix Convention Center's West Building and learn more about the artist at the Easton Foundation's website.