Louise Bourgeois The Spider, the Mistress & the Tangerine

Louise Bourgeois The Spider, the Mistress & the Tangerine is a 2008 American documentary film directed by Marion Cajori and Amei Wallach. It offers a comprehensive look into the life and artwork of Louise Bourgeois, a French-American artist famously known for her large-scale sculpture, installations and fearless portrayal of sexuality and femininity. The feature-length film, which spans 14 years, probes deeply into the ways Bourgeois uses her artwork to understand the world and her place within it, offering viewers a riveting journey through the rich tapestry of her life and work.

The film boasts distinguished appearances from Pandora Tabatabai Asbaghi, an art historian, who examines Bourgeois' immense influence on contemporary art and Jean-Louis Bourgeois, the artist’s son and an art historian himself, who offers intimate perspectives into his mother's personal and artistic journey. Importantly, the film also features Louise Bourgeois herself, presenting her in her sections of studio work, discussion, and recollection.

Louise Bourgeois The Spider, the Mistress & the Tangerine sheds light on various aspects of Bourgeois' creativity, which spans over six decades. Her sculptures, often made of latent materials such as latex, plaster, rubber, and cloth, encapsulate emotions and experiences of her past. The titles of Bourgeois' works alone - "The Destruction of the Father," "The Arch of Hysteria" and "Maman (Mother)" - suggest a demolition of conventional expectations, an artist wrestling with her personal history and unafraid to confront her demons through her work.

The Spider, the Mistress & The Tangerine dives into Bourgeois' process, her inspirations and reveals the complications and contradictions of her life as an artist and a woman. We see her grappling with and then embracing the psychological complexities that give rise to her startlingly original works. The documentary envelops the viewer in the artist’s at times chaotic workspace as she hacks, molds, and manipulates materials into creation. The veracity and intensity, fused with Bourgeois' incisive insights, offer a shamanistic commentary on the relationship between artist and artwork.

A poignant study on pain, fear, vengeance, and love, this documentary fathoms the darker corners of Bourgeois' childhood in France and maps out how these experiences have dictated her art. From her father's infidelity to her mother's protection, Bourgeois' history is traced and interpreted through her pieces, underscoring her belief that "Art is a guarantee of sanity".

The film refrains from being a linear biography and leans more towards a part philosophical discourse, part psychoanalysis of an individual who sees a universe of emotion and understanding in a single thread. It reveals fascinating insights, including her distinct sense of the way she views her art as being "not about understanding… it’s about recognizing." It is in these reflexive moments that the documentary takes a stand, not just as a film about art, but as something of an artwork itself.

The filmmakers offer a narrative that is both respectful and bracing, revealing that there is no division in Bourgeois's mind between feminism, the unconscious, sexual symbolism, and formal rigor in artwork. They show us an artist in the twilight of her life, looking back candidly at a career defined by courage and creativity, and forward with an unquenchable thirst for new ideas.

The most striking aspect of Louise Bourgeois The Spider, the Mistress & the Tangerine is how it captures Bourgeois’ razor-sharp wit, her tenacity, and her intense relationship with her art. The audience gets to witness the richness, humor, and bounty of her ideas resonate from her engagement with her own works, her space, her mind.

It is a thought-provoking, absorbing, and multidimensional look at the life and work of an iconic and path-breaking artist, who remained incredibly productive into her 90s. The documentary is a resounding testament to her enduring significance and an intimate portrait of an artist who has imbued scores of inanimate objects with layers of emotional complexity and intensity. Through its fusion of interviews, archival footage, and the immersive examination of Bourgeois' art, Louise Bourgeois The Spider, the Mistress & the Tangerine sets itself apart as not merely an artistic documentary but an exploration of the profound synergy between life and art drawn through the lens of a remarkable artistic persona.