Best 62 quotes of Louise Bourgeois on MyQuotes

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

Art is a guarantee of sanity.

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

Art is a way of recognizing oneself.

Art is manipulation without intervention.

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.

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

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.

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.

A work of art doesn't have to be explained.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

... 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.

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

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

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

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

I am not what I am, I am what I do with my hands.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

My life has been regulated by insomnia.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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