8
Jan
2016
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You must do it to get hold of yourself–Louise Bourgeois

You can stand anything if you write it down. You must do it to get hold of yourself…you must redirect your concentration…words put in connection can open up new relations, a new view of things.

Louise Bourgeois, 1994
Comment by the artist, MOMA catalogue of
The prints of Louise Bourgeois
, p 72

An artist’s words are always to be taken cautiously. The finished work is often a stranger to, and sometimes very much at odds with what the artist felt or wished to express when he began. At best the artist does what he can, rather than what he wants to do. After the battle is over and the damage faced up to, the result may be surprisingly dull–but sometimes is is surprisingly interesting…The core of his original impulse is to be found, if at all, in the work itself.

Louise Bourgeois,1954
Walker Art Center, Design Quarterly, no 30, p. 18

To really work and produce, there must be integration of your work in your life or the integration of your life in your work.

Louise Bourgeois,
journal/diary excerpt 5 February 1951

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