Maternal bodies in the visual arts / Rosemary Betterton.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Betterton, Rosemary, 1951- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women in art.

Mothers in art.

Pregnant women in art.

Pregnancy in art.

Physical Description:

xi, 201 pages : illustrations (black and white, and colour) ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Manchester : Manchester University Press, 2014.

Summary:

This book brings images of the maternal and pregnant body into the centre of art historical enquiry. By exploring religious, secular and scientific traditions as well as contemporary art practices, it demonstrates the power of visual imagery in framing our understand of maternal bodies and in affirming or contesting prevailing maternal ideals. In Western visual traditions the maternal body was conceived primarily in terms of a sacred vessel of divinity enshrined in the Christian virginal-maternal ideal or as a container for the unborn child in scientific representations of pregnancy. This book reassesses these historical models and in drawing on original case studies shows how visual practices by artists may offer the means of reconfiguring the maternal. Maternal bodies in the visual arts addresses themes of maternal space and time, sacred, medical and monstrous representations of maternal bodies, practices by maternal artists and the ageing maternal body. Each chapter is framed around readings of specific artworks by artists from Piero della Francesca to Louise Bourgeois that open up maternal embodiment as a space for investigation. At its heart is a crucial question: what does it mean to employ art as a means of thinking through the maternal? Uniquely it offers an investigation of maternal embodiment as the process of becoming a maternal subject. For many women who practice art, become pregnant and give birth, the most powerful and often transforming experience of their lives is routinely dismissed as sentimental or irrelevant to contemporary art practice. This book demonstrate how becoming maternal is a central but overlooked experience in art. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Maternal space and public intimacy 18

2 Maternal matters: making bodies in art 34

3 Enfleshing the divine: sacred and profane maternal bodies 61

4 The transparent womb: visual technologies and maternal bodies 87

5 Promising monsters and the maternal imagination 115

6 Maternal time: moments of encounter 139

7 Louise Bourgeois, ageing and maternal bodies 161.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780719083488

0719083486

OCLC:

875626410