Currently showing as part of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Art on Film series – Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, The Mistress, and The Tangerine, by Amei Wallach and Marion Cajoli, and Richard Serra: Thinking on Your Feet, by Maria Anna Tappeiner.
Filming the process of making art or getting an artist to talk about their work can be an illuminating experience or a bit like having the curtain pulled back in the Wizard of Oz; what was magical or inexplicable becomes mechanic. Each of these films prove to be the former. Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress, and the Tangerine “reveals much about this haunting and haunted master” writes Nathan Lee of The New York Times. At 96, Louise Bourgeois has always made work that commanded our attention.
Richard Serra: Thinking on Your Feet is an entirely different sort of art on film. While equally revealing about the artist, this documentary is specific to Serra’s installation The Matter of Time for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. Serra’s magnificent steel sculptures inspire a sort of childlike awe when you see them in person, and the film offers a glimpse into the Herculean effort of making them.
Both films run at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston through November 30th. See the complete calendar here.
