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

Louise Bourgeois

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Louise Bourgeois
Age: 98 †
Born: 1911
Born: January 1
Died: 2010
Died: January 1
Artist
Drawer
Engraver
Illustrator
Installation Artist
Jewelry Designer
Painter
Photographer
Printmaker
Sculptor
Visual Artist
Paris
France
Louise Goldwater
Bourgeois
Hands

More quotes by Louise Bourgeois

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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
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My art is a form of restoration in terms of my feelings to myself and to others.
Louise Bourgeois
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It is not a torment to be an artist. It is a privilege.
Louise Bourgeois
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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.
Louise Bourgeois
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I was raised a Catholic. But I am not religious. In my work, I am interested in real flesh and blood.
Louise Bourgeois
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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
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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.
Louise Bourgeois
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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.
Louise Bourgeois
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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
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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
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I dont watch TV. I dont use a computer, a fax or a cellphone.
Louise Bourgeois
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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
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Horizontality is a desire to give up, to sleep. Verticality is an attempt to escape. Hanging and floating are states of ambivalence.
Louise Bourgeois
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One must accept the fact that others don’t see what you do.
Louise Bourgeois
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My childhood has never lost its magic, it has never lost its mystery, and it has never lost its drama.
Louise Bourgeois
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It is a great privilege to be able to work with, and I suppose work off, my feelings through sculpture.
Louise Bourgeois
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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
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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
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Art is a way of recognizing oneself.
Louise Bourgeois
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Every day you have to abandon your past or accept it and then, if you cannot accept it, you become a sculptor.
Louise Bourgeois