User:Taughey/Mother

Page - 'Mother'

Section - 'In art'

Existing Text:

Throughout history mothers with their children have often been the subject of artistic works, such as paintings, sculptures or writings.

Fourth century grave reliefs on the island of Rhodes depicted mothers with children.

Paintings of mothers with their children have a long tradition in France. In the 18th century, these works embodied the Enlightenment's preoccupation with strong family bonds and the relation between mothers and children.

At the end of the nineteenth century, Mary Cassatt was a painter well known for her portraits of mothers.

Many contemporary movies portray mothers.

In art
Throughout history, mothers have been depicted in a variety of art works, including paintings, sculptures and written texts, that have helped define the cultural meaning of ‘mother’, as well as ideals and taboos of motherhood.

American poet, essayist and feminist Adrienne Rich has noted “the disjuncture between motherhood as patriarchal institution and motherhood as complexly and variously lived experience”. The vast majority of works depicting motherhood in western art history have been created by artists who are men, with very few having been created by women or mothers themselves, and these often focus on the “institution of motherhood” rather than diverse lived experiences. At the same time, art concerning motherhood has been historically marginalized within the feminist art movement, though this is changing with an increasing number of feminist publications addressing this topic.

The institution of motherhood in western art is often depicted through “the myth of the all-loving, all-forgiving and all-sacrificing mother” and related ideals. Examples include works featuring the Virgin Mary, an archetypal mother and a key historical basis for depictions of mothers in western art from the European Renaissance onwards. Mothers depicted in dominant art works are also primarily white, heterosexual, middle class and young or attractive.

These ideals of motherhood have been challenged by artists with lived experience as mothers. An example in western contemporary art is Mary Kelly’s Post-Partum Document. Bypassing typical themes of tenderness or nostalgia, this work documents in extensive detail the challenges, complexities and day-to-day realities of the mother-child relationship. Other artists have addressed similar aspects of motherhood that fall outside dominant ideals, including maternal ambivalence, desire, and the pursuit of self-fulfillment. While the ideal of maternal self-sacrifice and the ‘good mother’ forms an important part of many works of art relating to the Holocaust, other women’s Holocaust and post-Holocaust art has engaged more deeply with mothers’ trauma, taboos, and the experiences of second and third-generation Holocaust survivors. For example, works by first-generation survivors of the Holocaust such as Ella Liebermann-Shiber and Shoshana Neuman have depicted mothers abandoning and suffocating their children in an effort to stay alive themselves.

Increasingly diverse representations of motherhood can be found in contemporary works of art. Catherine Opie’s self-portrait photographs, including of herself nursing, reference the existing Virgin Mary archetype while subverting its norms around sexuality by centering her identity as a lesbian. Rather than attempting to make her experience of motherhood fit into existing norms, Opie’s photographs are “non-traditional and non-apologetic representations”.

In her 2020 photography collection, Solana Cain explored the meaning of joy for Black mothers to challenge the lack of images in mainstream media that represent Black motherhood. Renee Cox’s Yo Mama series of nude self-portraits challenge historical representations of both the black female body and of maternity and slavery in the US, the latter of which is often characterized by the “extreme passivity and devalued love” typically associated with motherhood.