Quote

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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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
Sleep
Desire
Give
States
Ambivalence
Giving
Floating
Hanging
Attempt
Escape

More quotes by 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
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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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For me, sculpture is the body. My body is my sculpture.
Louise Bourgeois
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An artist can show things that other people are terrified of expressing.
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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A work of art doesn't have to be explained.
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 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
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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
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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
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I am a searcher... I always was... and I still am... searching for the missing piece.
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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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 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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Artists are born not made. There's nothing you can do for them.
Louise Bourgeois
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Art is a guarantee of sanity. That is the most important thing I have said.
Louise Bourgeois
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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
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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
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Art is a guarantee of sanity.
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