Before we even see her, we hear her. As the camera of co-directors Marion Cajori and Amei Wallach sweeps over, through and around one of the massive installations of French-American visual artist Louise Bourgeois, then eighty-two years old, we hear her extol the role and necessity of aggression in the process of making art. Her voice is commanding and assertive, charming in its thickly accented English. It’s clearly the voice of someone who suffers no fools. The camera finally settles on Ms. Bourgeois in her Brooklyn studio as she wraps up her thought, and Ms. Wallach offers her take on what the artist has just shared. “Thank you for your input, Amei,” says Ms. Bourgeois with a crisp smile, “but that is not what I said.”
Check Out: Art Doc of the Week: The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo
After making art for decades, garnering a small, devoted following but no serious consideration by the art world, Louise Bourgeois was given a career retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 1982, the first woman to receive that honor. She was then seventy-one years old. No one could have predicted that what would follow would be a period of productivity that outstripped her previous work in terms of imagination and scope.
The film Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress and the Tangerine strikes the perfect balance in exploring the artist’s work and life, gingerly connecting the dots between the effects of Bourgeois’ personal life (her war-shaped childhood; her roles as wife and mother) and her concerns as an artist, without being facile. We see her being blunt, even curt, in her dealings with the filmmakers, her assistant and her son, but we can’t help but be won over by her unwavering commitment to truth – in her work and life. As the film weaves vintage photos and film clips, she’s shown working diligently in her Brooklyn studio, and the gems of insight she drops might make you want to grab a notebook and write them down. The success of the film, shot between 1993 and 2007, lies partly in the fact that its subject is so captivating, but the editing and pacing of the film are also sharp and smart; none of the footage chosen is extraneous. The documentary is both taut and substantive.
Bourgeois died in 2010 at the age of 98, and there is no finer tribute or introduction to her than Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress and the Tangerine.
The documentary is available for free viewing (for now) on Hulu. Watch it here.
