Throughout her interviews in Louise Bourgeois: The
Spider, The Mistress And The Tangerine, iconic 96-year-old Paris-born artist Louise Bourgeois
repeatedly struggles for the right words to explain her relationship to art.
Her English is impeccable; her second language isn't a barrier, except to the
degree that language itself is at fault. "You are to read between the lines
when I talk," she eventually grouses, over one request for clarification. Given
her beliefs about the relationship between art and the unconscious, forcing her
ideas into mere clumsy words is a burden.
Nonetheless, Louise Bourgeois is absorbing, largely because of
Bourgeois' striking art, prickly personality, and assured intensity. When she
describes sculpture as "a fight with your notion of
what you need," or announces that the government shouldn't support art because
art is about facing unconscious connections, she seems to be talking around
ideas rather than pinpointing them, but her passion and the strength of her
views come through clearly. Late director Marion Cajori and her partner
Amei Wallach assembled the film from a wide selection
of sources: interviews in Bourgeois' studio in the '90s, vintage footage
from Bourgeois' lengthy career, and recent talking-head interviews with
Bourgeois intimates and admirers all circle the difficulty of Bourgeois'
dreamlike sculptures. But most keenly, the filmmakers fill their documentary
with richly lit, loving visual explorations of those sculptures, from gaunt,
simple abstract figures to complicated, room-size installations that assemble
multimedia artifacts into haunting dreamscapes.
Louise Bourgeois is neither linear nor narrative; it jumps around in ways
that aren't always helpful, and assumes (or dismisses the importance of) some
familiarity with Bourgeois' career history, her personal life, and her place in
New York's artistic pantheon. But as a portrait of the artist and her work,
it's endlessly striking, a catalog of visual accomplishments that speak for
themselves.