Louise Bourgeois Quotes

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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 a guarantee of sanity.

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

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.

The spider is an animal who eats mosquitoes. That's why I love the spider - it is the only way we have to deal with these insects.

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

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

Surrealism is anathema for me. Because the surrealists made a joke of everything. And I consider life a tragedy.

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

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.

You must put the essence of what you want to say into a painting. The rest is arbitrary. Chosen with discernment, but chosen, and choice involves elimination.

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.

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

Artists have to be useful. They have to fill a role.

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

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.

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

Tell your own story, and you will be interesting.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Art is a way of recognizing oneself.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.