Quotes: Louise Bourgeois

"But there is something else in the assemblage, there is the restoration and reparation. Mind you that is what my parents did, they restored and repaired tapestries, so there is a common attitude. To repair a thing, to find something broken, to find a tapestry torn apart with big holes in it and destroyed and step by step rebuild it –– making an assemblage is that. You repair the thing until you remake it completely." 

–– Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010), French-American artist 

Source: Germano Gelant. Louise Bourgeois. The Fabric Works, 2010, p. 251. 

via: Sketchbook 32, 2022, p. 108.

Quotes: Louise Bourgeois

"The act of sewing is a process of emotional repair." 

–– Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010), French-American artist 

via: Sketchbook A, 2018, p. 63. 

Quotes: Louise Bourgeois

"My first experience of great luck was when I was not picked up by the art market and I was left to work by my myself for about fifteen years. I did not consider that I was ignored. I considered that I was being blessed by privacy. This is very, very important to me." 

–– Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010), French-American artist 

Source: Louise Bourgeois. Edited with texts by Marie-Laure Bernadac & Hans-Ulrich Obrist. Louise Bourgeois: Destruction of the Father/Reconstruction of the Father: Writings and Interviews 1923-1997. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1998; p. 144.

via: Sketchbook 20, 2012, p. 33

Quotes: Louise Bourgeois

"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

Quotes: Mystery

"Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man's desire to understand." – Neil Armstrong, American astronaut


"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science." – Albert Einstein, German-born theoretical physicist


"Man cannot live without mystery. He has great need of it." – John (Fire) Lame Deer, North American Sioux Shaman


"Songwriting is a bit like being connected to a mystery." – Paul Kelly, Australian singer-songwriter


"I think mystery is more interesting than explanation, so let's leave this as a mystery." – Louise Bourgeois, French-American artist. Quoted from Louise Bourgeois: Drawings and Observations, 1995, p. 123.