Art is not about art. Art is about life…Art will continue, because…it is about the hurt of not being able to express yourself properly, to express your intimate relations, your unconscious, to trust the world enough to express yourself directly in it. It is about trying to be sane in this situation, of being tentatively and temporally sane by expressing yourself. All art comes from terrific failures and terrific needs that we have. It is about the difficulty of being a self because one is neglected. Art is a way of recognizing oneself…Without fear nothing in the world would ever be done. – Louise Bourgeios (p 167, 173…)
One of my favorite collectors collected white stones, each the size of a pebble and each representing a beautiful moment. These stones had a mysterious value to him and to no one else. Some people collect good luck charms like a penny on the street. Eery time they find one they get titallated.
Is the social worker collecting a collection of saved lives? What about the need to collect friends? What about diaries? My diaries are a form of collecting and they have no use to anybody but me.
The only saving grace of collecting is its transitional value…hopefully there is a transition from the world of the object to the world of ideas.
–Louise Bourgeios, Artforum, 1994, vol 32.
