Louise Bourgeois Quotes & Sayings

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

You learn for yourself not for others, not to show off, not to put the other one down/ learning is your secret, it is all you have, it is the only thing you can call your own. nobody can take it away ... — Louise Bourgeois

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. — Louise Bourgeois

It is not so much where my motivation comes from but rather how it manages to survive. — Louise Bourgeois

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

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

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. — Louise Bourgeois

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. — Louise Bourgeois

Art is a way of recognizing oneself ... — Louise Bourgeois

And what's the use of talking, if you already know that others don't feel what you feel? — Louise Bourgeois

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. — Louise Bourgeois

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. — Louise Bourgeois

there are many realities — Louise 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. — Louise Bourgeois

Space is something that you have to define. Otherwise, it is like anxiety, which is too vague. A fear is something specific. I like claustrophobic spaces, because at least then you know your limits. — Louise Bourgeois

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. — Louise Bourgeois

Art is a guarantee of sanity. — Louise Bourgeois

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. — Louise Bourgeois

A work of art doesn't have to be explained. If you do not have any feeling about this, I cannot explain it to you. If this doesn't touch you, I have failed. — Louise Bourgeois

I have kept a diary as long as I can remember, and drawings are really another kind of diary. — Louise Bourgeois

I always had the fear of being separated and abandoned. The sewing is my attempt to keep things together and make things whole. — Louise Bourgeois

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. — Louise Bourgeois

Tell your own story, and you will be interesting. — Louise Bourgeois

I do not need the musing of the philosophers to tell me what I am doing. It would be more interesting to let me know why I am doing it. — Louise Bourgeois

For me, sculpture is the body. My body is my sculpture. — Louise Bourgeois

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

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. — Louise Bourgeois

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 I'm inspired by the results. — Louise Bourgeois

I don't watch TV. I don't use a computer, a fax or a cellphone. — Louise Bourgeois

The spider is a repairer. If you bash into the web of a spider, she doesn't get mad. She weaves and repairs it. — Louise Bourgeois

One must accept the fact that others don't see what you do. — Louise Bourgeois

I work like a bee and feel that I accomplish little. — Louise Bourgeois

I know that when I finish a drawing, my anxiety level decreases. The realistic drawings are a way of pinning down an idea. I don't want to loose it. With the abstract drawings, when I'm feeling loose, I can slip into the unconscious. — Louise Bourgeois

I am not what I am, I am what I do with my hands... — Louise Bourgeois

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. — Louise Bourgeois

I have been to hell and back, and let me tell you, it was wonderful. — Louise Bourgeois

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 rewoven. — Louise Bourgeois

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. — Louise Bourgeois

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. — Louise Bourgeois

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. — Louise Bourgeois

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

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

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

Art is manipulation without intervention. — Louise Bourgeois

Sometimes it is necessary to make a confrontation-and I like that. — Louise Bourgeois

It is a great privilege to be able to work with, and I suppose work off, my feelings through sculpture. — Louise Bourgeois

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. — Louise Bourgeois

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

Even though what I do does enter the market, it doesn't interest me. I am exclusively concerned with the formal qualities of my work. It is about the need and the right to self-expression. — Louise Bourgeois

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. — Louise Bourgeois

When my mother died, I fell apart. My father wanted to control me. As a consequence, I ran away to America. — Louise Bourgeois

Art is restoration: the idea is to repair the damages that are inflicted in life, to make something that is fragmented - which is what fear and anxiety do to a person - into something whole. — Louise Bourgeois

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. — Louise Bourgeois

My knives are like a tongue - I love, I do not love, I hate. If you don't love me, I am ready to attack. I am a double-edged knife. — Louise 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. — Louise Bourgeois

The colour blue - that is my colour - and the colour blue means you have left the drabness of day-to-day reality to be transported into - not a world of fantasy, it's not a world of fantasy - but a world of freedom where you can say what you like and what you don't like. This has been expressed forever by the colour blue, which is really sky blue. — Louise Bourgeois

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

Horizontality is a desire to give up, to sleep. Verticality is an attempt to escape. Hanging and floating are states of ambivalence. — Louise Bourgeois

It is not a torment to be an artist. It is a privilege. — Louise Bourgeois

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

An artist can show things that other people are terrified of expressing. — Louise Bourgeois

My childhood has never lost its mystery, and it has never lost its drama. — Louise Bourgeois