Louise Bourgeois
Louise Bourgeois
Louise Joséphine Bourgeois; 25 December 1911 – 31 May 2010) was a French-American artist. Best known for her large-scale sculpture and installation art, Bourgeois was also a prolific painter and printmaker. She explored a variety of themes over the course of her long career including domesticity and the family, sexuality and the body, as well as death and the subconscious. Although Bourgeois exhibited with the Abstract Expressionists and her work has much in common with Surrealism and Feminist art, she was...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionSculptor
Date of Birth25 December 1911
CityParis, France
CountryFrance
Space is something that you have to define. Otherwise, it is like anxiety, which is too vague. A fear is something specific. I like claustrophobic spaces, because at least then you know your limits.
Even though what I do does enter the market, it doesn't interest me. I am exclusively concerned with the formal qualities of my work. It is about the need and the right to self-expression.
My childhood has never lost its mystery, and it has never lost its drama.
I know that when I finish a drawing, my anxiety level decreases. The realistic drawings are a way of pinning down an idea. I don't want to loose it. With the abstract drawings, when I'm feeling loose, I can slip into the unconscious.
I was a 'runaway girl' from France who married an American and moved to New York City. I'm not sure I would have continued as an artist had I remained in Paris because of the family setup.
When my mother died, I fell apart. My father wanted to control me. As a consequence, I ran away to America.
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 childhood has never lost its magic, it has never lost its mystery, and it has never lost its drama.
Art is a guarantee of sanity. That is the most important thing I have said.
My life has been regulated by insomnia.
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.
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.
I have kept a diary as long as I can remember, and drawings are really another kind of diary.
It is a great privilege to be able to work with, and I suppose work off, my feelings through sculpture.