By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Amei Wallach | Marion Cajori
Country: united_states
Year: 2008
Running time: 90
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1386654/reference
Bruce says: “Films about artists often fall short because the filmmaker does not know how to balance the personal life of the artist with the product he or she has created. The two universes seem not to even intersect in some documentaries. In LOUISE BOURGEOIS: THE SPIDER, THE MISTRESS AND THE TANGERINE Marion Cajori and Amei Wallach have made sure that Louise Bourgeois’ artistic output gets equal time with her life story. To that end they have created a very powerful film about the artistic process. The film does have one major flaw. Amei Wallach interviews Ms. Bourgeois throughout the film, asking inane questions and making stupid comments that the subject finds off-putting to the extent that she clams up at times when she should be doing the opposite.
“Louise Bourgeois at the age of 96 is currently (the summer of 2008) having a giant retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. She is still a working artist. As artists go she must be considered a late bloomer. Her career did not blossom because as she puts it “It was not me who ignored the market, the market ignored me. I had complete faith in the work.” No doubt the fact she was a woman hurt her greatly in the forties, fifties and sixties. Critics adhered strongly to the ‘boys’ club” mentality, literally locking women out of the limelight. Bourgeois finds it amusing that although she has never considered herself a true feminist she has been lionized by the Guerilla Girls.
“Louise Bourgeois was born in Paris before WWI. Her family was wealthy; her parents were unhappily married. Her mother was nurturing and Bourgeois admits that her now famous spider (not a metaphor but a souvenir she claims) sculptures were inspired by her mother’s best qualities. Her father for years was having an affair with the live-in governess (the mistress). The tangerine in the film’s title refers to the embarrassing male nude cutouts her father made from tangerine rinds during family dinners. Bourgeois therefore describes these as the defining elements that inspire her art. But she also has been driven by rear and anxiety. She feels that her work is a form of diary, if her life was documented in her art no one could throw it out. Alfred Barr, the first president of MOMA, introduced her to Robert Goldwater in Paris in 1938. Goldwater insisted he could not return to New York without her, so Louise married him and left France. They had three sons, two of whom are still alive and participated in the documentary.
“As an artist Bourgeois thinks one needs to be aggressive, one needs energy. Bourgeois is direct as she states ‘it is difficult to be a woman and be likable.’ In defining success she explains, ‘What gives me pleasure is that I do, undo and redo,’ her formula for self- knowledge. Others may define her success differently: Bourgeois represented the United States in the 1993 Venice Biennale. Her gigantic spiders have graced public spaces at Storm King, in Ottawa, the Hermitage, Tokyo, Seoul, Bordeaux, The Hague, Havana, Rockefeller Center, the Tuilleries and Bilbao. Brava! 4 cats”