Louise Bourgeois Quotes

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Art is a guarantee of sanity.

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.

Art is a way of recognizing oneself ...

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Art is manipulation without intervention.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

there are many realities

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

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

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.

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.

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.