Louise Bourgeois Quotes - Page 2

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

My life has been regulated by insomnia.

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 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.

Art is a guarantee of sanity.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Women had to work like slaves in the art world, but a lot of men got to the top through their charm. And it hurt them. To be young and pretty didn't help a woman in the art world, because the social scene, and the buying scene, was in the hands of women - women who had money. They wanted male artists who would come alone and be their charming guests. Rothko could be very charming. It was a court. And the artist buffoons came to the court to entertain, to charm. Now it has changed, now the younger men are in - older women and younger men.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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