They are to be found everywhere – in the structure of a snail's shell or a pine cone, or the whorl of our fingerprints; in the shape of the Dean's Staircase at St Paul's Cathedral, or the exterior and interior of the Guggenheim Museum in New York; in the tusk of the narwhal – or, indeed, the unicorn; winding through the heart of our galaxy, and in the double helix of our DNA.
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The spiral is one of the oldest geometric shapes found in the ancient world – petroglyphs of the symbols date back to the Neolithic period, and they are one of the most common patterns in nature, found in the path of draining water or the eye of a hurricane.
Nature is full of twists, spirals and helixes, from sea shells and galaxies to our DNA (Credit: Getty Images)
There are various types, such as the logarithmic spiral, first described by Albrecht Durer in 1525; the Archimedean spiral, so called after the 3rd-Century BC Greek mathematician; Fermat's spiral; the helix and the vortex, to name a few. They're prevalent in man-made structures in art, design and architecture, both secular and sacred – such as the 9th-Century Great Mosque of Samarra or the Vatican Museum's spiral staircase.
And this mesmerising form is having a moment, with the imminent launch of what promises to be an iconic new skyscraper in New York. The Spiral is a 66-floor structure that tapers skyward at 66 Hudson Boulevard; its build cost, including site purchase, was $3.2 billion, and at just over 1,000-ft tall, it's one of the tallest buildings in the city. Open-air garden terraces snake around the building – these double-height atriums on each floor, according to the publicity information, make a "unique hybrid that intertwines a continuous green pathway" spiralling up.
Dominyka Voelkle, an associate at BIG NYC, the architecture firm behind The Spiral, tells BBC Culture that it has "a very striking silhouette – modern and recognisable and yet very 'old New York', reminiscent of stepped, setback skyscrapers such as the Rockefeller Centre". The wellbeing and mental health of occupants were integral to the brief; Spiral's biophilic design – which gives access to outdoor space and better indoor air quality – contributes to that. "The design will help occupants to find tranquility in a busy environment – and the greenery is there to be calming or provide a little reboot," says Voelkle.
The Spiral skyscraper in New York is due to be completed this year, and incorporates terraces twisting around its exterior (Credit: BIG NYC)
Trees and plants have been "acclimatised" upstate before being transplanted to the harsher Manhattan climate prior to planting; providing they take well and flourish, Spiral will be "the first of its type and the highest vertical garden in the world," says Voelkle.
For Louise Bourgeois, spirals were more than a symbol to toy with – they were embedded in her psyche
Artists across the ages have taken inspiration from spirals. Leonardo da Vinci used spirals in many of his drawings, such as those of molluscs, not to mention his double-helix spiral staircase at Chateau de Chambord in France. Meanwhile, Chan Hwee Chong, a contemporary Singapore artist, makes illustrations of famous paintings including Da Vinci's Mona Lisa or Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring using a continuous spiralling line.
For Louise Bourgeois, spirals were more than a symbol to toy with – they were embedded in her psyche, representing the birth, life and rebirth cycle, and sometimes in her work referencing motherhood. The late French-American artist recalled how the spiral – as a potent, occasionally violent, symbol – impressed on her from a young age, and her working life in her family's tapestry restoration business in Paris. "The spiral is important to me," she said in 1994. "It is a twist. As a child, after washing tapestries in the river, I'd turn and twist and wring them… Later I'd dream of my father's mistress. I'd do it in my dreams by wringing her neck." She said she loved the spiral, and it "represents control and freedom".
The spider is another frequent motif Bourgeois used; her monumental steel spider sculpture Maman dominated the Turbine Hall in London's newly opened Tate Modern in May 2000. Spirals and spiders loom large in a current show at London's Hayward Gallery featuring Bourgeois's fabric art. It includes a sculpture, Spiral Woman, a motif she returned to repeatedly, in which a woman's upper body is trapped in a spiral, like a giant spider's prey. Bourgeois described drawing as "a secretion, like a thread in a spider's web." Katie Guggenheim, assistant curator of The Woven Child, notes that the artist was in psychoanalysis for 30-odd years, and referenced that throughout eight decades of her career. "In fact, some of the works seem to be spiralling out of control into madness," she notes.
For the artist Louise Bourgeois, the spiral represents birth, life and rebirth (Credit: Alamy)
Taking the symbol into nature is Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty, a giant spiral-shaped environmental artwork of 1,500ft by 15ft. Built with 6,000 tons of basalt at the mouth of a terminal basin in Great Salt Lake, Utah, where it will inevitably be eroded, it reflects Smithson's fascination with entropy. "One could perhaps see it as a culturally collective symbol of the emergence of the feminine," notes the artist's website, which points out "the spiral goes counter-clockwise, toward the unconscious".
The Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung, renowned for his work on symbols, archetypes and the collective unconscious, wrote: "The spiral in psychology means that when you make a spiral you always come over the same point where you have been before, but never really the same, it is above or below, inside, outside, so it means growth." Jung visualised the unconscious process as moving "spiral-wise round a centre, gradually getting closer, while the characteristics of the centre grow more and more distinct".
"Serpent of energy"
A fascination with consciousness and the psyche in the West no doubt contributed to the growing interest in meditation and yoga from the 1960s, such as the practice of kundalini yoga, in which the spiral plays a fundamental role: "kundal" is a Sanskrit word for spiral or coil, denoting a serpent of energy that coils up through the chakras. In the healing arts, a spiral represents connectivity to the divine. In Vortex healing, it is believed that a divine spiral energy is brought in through the heart to manifest healing and transformation.
The spiral is a motif in Hitchcock's Vertigo, and also features in the scene in Jungle Book where the snake Kaa hypnotises Mowgli (Credit: Alamy)
Around the same time, psychedelic art made good use of spirals and kaleidoscopic patterns to suggest the effect of hallucinogenic drugs and altered consciousness. This and the influence of psychoanalysis is clear in films such as Vertigo (1958) in which director Alfred Hitchcock uses spirals to suggest the "downward spiral" into insanity of his main protagonist, Scottie; from the opening credits, a spiral whirling in a graphic eye hypnotises us as a man in silhouette tumbles into a well of psychosis. A spiral staircase triggers Scottie's vertigo and the score, by Bernard Herrmann, was "built around spirals and circles – of fulfilment and despair", according to film director Martin Scorsese. And spiral or concentric eyes are animators' shorthand for madness – or hypnosis, such as the sinister scene when Kaa the snake in Jungle Book hypnotises Mowgli in order to eat him.
Spirals are enigmatic, which is perhaps why they lend themselves to interpretations that are, as Jung put it, "cosmic"
A nobler intention was at the heart of a New-York based African-American collective, Spiral, formed in 1963, as a direct response to the march on Washington for jobs and freedom rally. Led by Romare Bearden, Norman Lewis, Charles Alston and Hale Woodruff, its 15 members aimed to address how African-American artists should respond to the US's changing political and cultural scene. They chose an Archimedean spiral because, "from a starting point, it moves outward embracing all directions, yet constantly upward".
Emma Amos, Spiral's youngest and only female member, died in May 2020. But the group is still celebrated: fashion designer Duro Olowu wrote in Vogue of how he was "captivated" by Amos's use of bold, vivid colour, and her "ability to powerfully challenge sexism and racism… By addressing sexism, racism and stereotypes around black feminism, her paintings offer the kind of resilience and optimism for change that is so important now".
A spiral logo was recently chosen by the new creative director of luxury fashion house Chloe, Gabriela Hearst, to flag up its most exquisite artisan pieces. "Spirals are in," declared Vogue in response. "A nod to circularity, perhaps? Nothing is a coincidence in Hearst’s world; helixes are next season's most coveted motif."
The spiral is frequently featured in sacred spaces, including the Vatican (Credit: Getty Images)
Astronomer Edward Hubble narrowed down galaxies into four shapes: elliptical, lenticular, irregular – and spiral. Of all the galaxies scientists have so far discovered, most are of the spiral type, "twisted collections of stars and gas that often have beautiful shapes", according to space.com. The Milky Way – our solar system – is an "elegant spiral structure dominated by just two arms wrapping off the ends of a central bar of stars," says Nasa Science. Spirals are omnipresent, enduring and infinitely fascinating, but they are also enigmatic, which is perhaps why they lend themselves to interpretations that are, as Jung put it, "cosmic". Like black holes, they remain one of life's mysteries.
Louise Bourgeois: The Woven Child is at The Hayward Gallery, London until 15 May 2022.
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