100+ Louise Bourgeois Quotes | InspiringQuotes.us

source: - Louise Bourgeois, Gerald Matt, Peter Weiermair (2005). “Louise Bourgeois: Aller-Retour : Zeichnungen und Skulpturen”, Verlag Fur Moderne Kunst

Topics: Together, Abandoned, Sewing

Everywhere in the modern world there is neglect, the need to be recognized, which is not satisfied. Art is a way of recognizing oneself, which is why it will always be modern.

Topics: Art, Needs, World

To be an artist, you need to exist in a world of silence.

Topics: Artist, Silence, Needs

Clothing is . . . an exercise in memory. It makes me explore the past: how did I feel when I wore that. They are like signposts in the search for the past.

source: - Jerry Gorovoy, Louise Bourgeois, Pandora Tabatabai Asbaghi, Paulo Herkenhoff, Fondazione Prada (Milan, Italy) (1997). “Louise Bourgeois: blue days and pink days”

Topics: Art, Memories, Exercise, Signposts

... geometry became a symbol for human relations, except that it was better, because in geometry things never go bad. If certain things occur, if certain lines meet, an angle is born. You cannot fail. It's not going to fail; it is eternal. I found in rules of mathematics a peace and a trust that I could not place in human beings. This sublimation was total and remained total. Thus, I'm able to avoid or manipulate or process pain.

Topics: Pain, Lines, Able

The twentieth-century artist who uses symbols is alienated because the system of symbols is a private one. After you have dealt with the symbols you are still private, you are still lonely, because you are not sure anyone will understand it except yourself. The ransom of privacy is that you are alone.

Topics: Lonely, Loneliness, Artist

I dont watch TV. I dont use a computer, a fax or a cellphone.

Topics: Fax, Watches, Use, Cellphone

I have drawn my whole life. My parents were in the tapestry restoration business, and as a young girl, I would draw in the missing parts of the tapestry that needed to be re-woven. My ability to draw made me indispensable to my parents.

Topics: Girl, Drawing, Parent, Bourgeois

What modern art means is that you have to keep finding new ways to express yourself, to express the problems, that there are no settled ways, no fixed approach. This is a painful situation, and modern art is about this painful situation of having no absolutely definite way of expressing yourself.

Topics: Art, Mean, Way, Bourgeois, Painful Situations

My work has to do with a defense against fervor. People are always in a rush. To do what? To do nothing! There is a kind of fervor that is completely meaningless. This drawing is a call for meditation.... I am an insomniac, so for me the state of being asleep is paradise. It is a paradise I can never reach. But I still try to conquer the insomnia, and to a large extent I have done it; it is conquerable. My drawings are a kind of rocking or stroking and an attempt at finding peace. Peaceful rhythm. Like rocking a baby to sleep.

Topics: Baby, Sleep, Insomnia, Insomniac, Fervor

At the dinner table when I was very little, I would hear people bickering... To escape the bickering, I started modelling the soft bread with my fingers. With the dough of the French bread %u2013 sometimes it was still warm %u2013 I would make little figures. And I would line them up on the table and this was really my first sculpture.

Topics: People, Sculpture, Lines, French Bread, Modelling

Art is a guarantee of sanity. That is the most important thing I have said.

Topics: Art, Important, Guarantees, Bourgeois

I work like a bee and feel that I accomplish little.

Topics: Work, Littles, Bees

Every day you have to abandon your past or accept it and then, if you cannot accept it, you become a sculptor.

source: - Louise Bourgeois, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (1999). “Louise Bourgeois: memoria y arquitectura : Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 16 de noviembre de 1999-14 de febrero del 2000”, Actar-D

Topics: Past, Sculpture, Accepting

For me, sculpture is the body. My body is my sculpture.

Topics: Sculpture, Body

My life has been regulated by insomnia.

Topics: Sleep, Insomnia

Look at it this way - a totem pole is just a decorated tree. My work is a confessional.

Topics: Tree, Looks, Way

I am a searcher... I always was... and I still am... searching for the missing piece.

Topics: Missing, Pieces, Searchers, Missing Piece

I like Francis Bacon best, because Francis Bacon has terrific problems, and he knows that he is not going to solve them, but he knows also that he can escape from day to day and stay alive, and he does that because his work gives him a kick.

Topics: Giving, Doe, Alive, Staying Alive

When I was growing up, all the women in my house were using needles. I've always had a fascination with the needle, the magic power of the needle. The needle is used to repair damage. It's a claim to forgiveness. It is never aggressive, it's not a pin.

source: - "Larry Clark’s America". Interview with Owen Wilson, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 23, 2016.

Topics: Growing Up, House, Magic, Magic Powers

Everyone should have the right to marry. To make a commitment to love someone forever is a beautiful thing.

Topics: Beautiful, Commitment, Forever

My mother was a restorer, she repaired broken things. I don't do that. I destroy things. I cannot go the straight line. I must destroy, rebuild, destroy again. My rhythm is not the same. My mother moved in a straight line: I go from one extreme to the other.

Topics: Mother, Broken, Lines, Broken Things

Once I was beset by anxiety but I pushed the fear away by studying the sky, determining when the moon would come out and where the sun would appear in the morning.

Topics: Morning, Moon, Sky

My childhood has never lost its magic, it has never lost its mystery, and it has never lost its drama.

Topics: Drama, Childhood, Magic, Bourgeois

It is not a torment to be an artist. It is a privilege.

Topics: Artist, Privilege, Torment

Women had to work like slaves in the art world, but a lot of men got to the top through their charm. And it hurt them. To be young and pretty didn't help a woman in the art world, because the social scene, and the buying scene, was in the hands of women â€“ women who had money. They wanted male artists who would come alone and be their charming guests. Rothko could be very charming. It was a court. And the artist buffoons came to the court to entertain, to charm. Now it has changed, now the younger men are in â€“ older women and younger men.

Topics: Art, Hurt, Men, Older Women, Be Young

The Spider is an ode to my mother. She was my best friend. Like a spider, my mother was a weaver. . . Like spiders, my mother was very clever. Spiders are friendly presences that eat mosquitoes. We know that mosquitoes spread diseases and are therefore unwanted. So, spiders are helpful and protective, just like my mother.

source: - "Giant spider takes up residence at Tate", www.theguardian.com. October 3, 2007.

Topics: Mother, Clever, Friendly, Odes

I came from a family of repairers. The spider is a repairer. If you bash into the web of a spider, she doesn't get mad. She weaves and repairs it.

source: - "Louise Bourgeois: a web of emotions" by Adrian Searle, www.theguardian.com. June 1, 2010.

Topics: Mad, Spiders, Bash, Bourgeois

I found in rules of mathematics a peace and a trust that I could not place in human beings. This sublimation was total and remained total.

Topics: Learning, Science, Discovery

My work disturbs people and nobody wants to be disturbed. They are not fully aware of the effect my work has on them, but they know it is disturbing.

Topics: People, Want, Disturbed

The feminists took me as a role model, as a mother. It bothers me. I am not interested in being a mother. I am still a girl trying to understand myself.

source: - "Louise Bourgeois: a web of emotions" by Adrian Searle, www.theguardian.com. June 1, 2010.

Topics: Girl, Mother, Role Models, Bourgeois

My art is a form of restoration in terms of my feelings to myself and to others.

source: - "My art is a form of restoration". Interview with Rachel Cooke, www.theguardian.com. October 14, 2007.

Topics: Art, Feelings, Restoration

To express your emotions, you have to be very loose and receptive. The unconscious will come to you if you have that gift that artists have. I only know if Im inspired by the results.

Topics: Artist, Emotion, Inspired, Receptive

I was raised a Catholic. But I am not religious. In my work, I am interested in real flesh and blood.

Topics: Religious, Real, Blood, Flesh And Blood

I was a runaway girl from France who married an American and moved to New York City. Im not sure I would have continued as an artist had I remained in Paris because of the family setup.

Topics: Girl, New York, Artist, Setups, Runaway

Tell your own story, and you will be interesting.

Topics: Interesting, Stories

Don't get the green disease of envy. Don't be fooled by success and money. Don't let anything come between you and your work.

Topics: Envy, Disease, Green, Success And Money

In my sculpture, it's not an image I am seeking, it's not an idea. My goal is to re-live a past emotion. My art is an exorcism, and beauty is something I never talk about.

source: - Louise Bourgeois (1998). “Destruction of the Father, Reconstruction of the Father: Writings and Interviews, 1923-1997”

Topics: Art, Past, Ideas, Exorcism

A work of art does not need an explanation. The work has to speak for itself. The work may be subject to many interpretations, but only one was in the mind of the artist. Some artists say to make the work readable for the public is an artist’s responsibility, but I don’t agree with that. The only responsibility to be absolutely truthful to the self. My work disturbs people and nobody wants to be disturbed They are not fully aware of the effect my work has on them, but they know it is disturbing.

Topics: Art, Responsibility, Self

One must accept the fact that others don’t see what you do.

Topics: Facts, Accepting

The subject of pain is the business I am in - to give meaning and shape to frustration and suffering. The existence of pain cannot be denied. I propose no remedies or excuses.

source: - Jerry Gorovoy, Louise Bourgeois, Pandora Tabatabai Asbaghi, Paulo Herkenhoff, Fondazione Prada (Milan, Italy) (1997). “Louise Bourgeois: blue days and pink days”

Topics: Pain, Frustration, Giving

Artists are born not made. There's nothing you can do for them.

Topics: Artist, Born, Made

I am a lonely runner, but I am a long-distance runner.

source: - Source: www.procuniarworkshop.com

Topics: Lonely, Distance, Long

If you are resentful, you keep the thing alive. So the way to go on is to get rid of it, in order to forgive in order to forget.

source: - Source: www.procuniarworkshop.com

Topics: Order, Forgiving, Goes On

Everything I do is inspired by my early life”, Bourgeois’ looked up to her mother who was the most important person in her life for many reasons, ‘Maman’ symbolizes her mother; “The friend, because my best friend was my mother and she was deliberate, clever, patient, soothing, reasonable, dainty, subtle, indispensable, neat, and as useful as a spider.

Topics: Mother, Clever, Important, Most Important Person, Early Life

If you flatter me, or if you look at me the right way, I will kill myself to please you. It's very painful to be an overachiever.