imagine...: Season 12, Episode 4

12 - 4: Louise Bourgeois: Spiderwoman

Alan Yentob presents a profile of the provocative French-born American artist Louise Bourgeois, who was still producing cutting edge work at the age of 95.

Memories of a disturbed childhood have produced fantastic and disturbing sculptures of giant spiders and poured-plastic body parts. As a girl she restored old tapestries, worked with Leger and knew surrealists like Breton and Duchamp. In New York she emerged as an artist in her own right, bringing dread, desire, sex and the psyche into her work.

Yentob goes to a Sunday salon at her New York home where young artists queue up to get her often fiery reactions to their work. He talks with Tracey Emin, Antony Gormley, Stella Vine and others who have been inspired by this strange and mischievous artist.