A woman I would have loved to have met

Especially since I use so much symbolism in my art I would have loved to have had a conversation with her...and shared the relevance of the powerful symbols.

Louise Bourgeois, the grande dame of contemporary artists best known for her sculpture and disquieting symbolism, died Monday of a heart attack at a hospital in Manhattan. She was 98.

Ms. Bourgeois acknowledged that the spider imagery in her art was a Freudian symbol of female sexuality, a private symbol of her mother and a celebration of arachnids' crucial predator role in keeping the Earth's insect population in check.

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Louise Bourgeois's Crouching Spider, a 10-foot high bronze spider at Embarcadero.