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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 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.

		-- Harper's Magazine, September 1998, p. 34

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