64+ Louise Bourgeois Quotes On Art, Far And Expressive

Louise Bourgeois was a French-American artist who was active from the 1940s to the 2010s. She is best known for her large-scale sculptures and installations which often explore themes of sexuality, identity, and the body. Her work has been exhibited in major galleries and museums around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Louise Bourgeois on art, life, love.

Top 10 Louise Bourgeois Quotes

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. I have been to hell and back, and let me tell you, it was wonderful.
4. I am not what I am, I am what I do with my hands.
5. 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.
6. Art is a guarantee of sanity. That is the most important thing I have said.
7. An artist can show things that other people are terrified of expressing.
8. 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.
9. I am a searcher... I always was... and I still am... searching for the missing piece.
10. Horizontality is a desire to give up, to sleep. Verticality is an attempt to escape. Hanging and floating are states of ambivalence.

Louise Bourgeois Image Quotes

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

Louise Bourgeois Short Quotes

• It is not so much where my motivation comes from but rather how it manages to survive.
• I have kept a diary as long as I can remember, and drawings are really another kind of diary.
• Sometimes it is necessary to make a confrontation-and I like that.
• Look at it this way - a totem pole is just a decorated tree. My work is a confessional.
• I dont watch TV. I dont use a computer, a fax or a cellphone.
• I am a lonely runner, but I am a long-distance runner.
• Artists have to be useful. They have to fill a role.
• To be an artist, you need to exist in a world of silence.
• I work like a bee and feel that I accomplish little.
• Tell your own story, and you will be interesting.

Louise Bourgeois Quotes About Art

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

Art is a guarantee of sanity. — 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

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

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

Art is a way of recognizing oneself. — Louise Bourgeois

Art is manipulation without intervention. — Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bourgeois Quotes About Life

My life has been regulated by insomnia. — Louise Bourgeois

Surrealism is anathema for me. Because the surrealists made a joke of everything. And I consider life a tragedy. — 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 re-woven. My ability to draw made me indispensable to my parents. — Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bourgeois Quotes About Love

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

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. — 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

Louise Bourgeois Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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. — Louise Bourgeois

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. — 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 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

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

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. — 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

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. — 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

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

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

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

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

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. — Louise Bourgeois

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

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. — Louise Bourgeois

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

Life Lessons by Louise Bourgeois

1. Louise Bourgeois's work emphasizes the importance of exploring and expressing one's emotions, no matter how uncomfortable they may be.
2. Her art also highlights the power of creativity to help us process and understand our experiences.
3. Finally, her work encourages us to take risks and explore our own unique perspectives and interpretations.