[Distinction] (Thanks to PS)
THE AMERICAN SUBLIME
From “Sunday Afternoons,” an interview with artist Louise bourgeois, in Uncontrollable Beauty: Toward a New Aesthetics, a collection of essays and interview edited by Bill Beckley and published by Allworth Press.
Bill Beckley: You were born in France, but you have lived a long time in the United States. What is the difference between the aesthetics of the two countries?
Louise Bourgeois: I’ll tell you a story about my mother. When I was a little girl growing up in France, my mother worked sewing tapestries. Some of the tapestries were exported to America. The only problem was that many of the images on the tapestries were of naked people. My mother’s job was to cut out the–what do you call it?
Beckley: The genitals?
Bourgeois: Yes, the genitals of the men and women, and replace these parts with pictures of flowers so they could be sold to Americans. My mother saved all the pictures of the genitals over the years, and one day she sewed them together as a quilt, and then she gave the quilt to me. That’s the difference between French and American aesthetics.
Young Louise Makin' Art
One out of her vast library of whimsical but slightly evil prints.
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