Mystical Maternity

Gustav Klimt and "Hope"

Gustav Klimt spent a career portraying beautiful women in gilded art. Klimt painted in a time where the dichotomy between male and female was a hotly debated topic, and pregnancy even more so. Creating images which centre on the experience of pregnancy was a bold move for the artist.

In Hope I we see a young, naked pregnant woman. Although she is someone resplendent, evil lurks behind her. The contrast of her luminous figure, when considered with the darkness behind her, helps illustrate the name of the piece. Her nakedness, when compared to the shrouded figure behind her, also presents Hope as the opposite of the fear behind her.

In Hope II, the outcome seems less promising. The pregnant figure sits atop the saddened women who are carrying her. In front of her stomach is a symbol of death. In this instance, her hope seems misplaced. The women around her, and the skull seem to hint at a dire outcome for this pregnancy. The painting, with its sumptuous colors and multitude of figures, still is not completely melancholy. The life around the doomed figure seems rich indeed.

Paul Gaugin, "Mother and Daughter" c. 1891. The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Gustave Klimt, "Hope II"

1903. National Gallery in Canada

Gustave Klimt, "Hope II" 1907-8. MoMA

Pablo Picasso. "Mother and Child." 1921. The Art Institute of Chicago

Marc Chagall. "Bathing of the Baby" 1916. State Historical and Architectual Museum, Psvov, Russia

Charles Maurin

Paula Modersohn Baker. "Breastfeeding Mother." 1902. Modersohn-Becker Museum.

Paula Modersohn Baker. "Self Portrait Age 30. 6th Wedding Day" 1906. Modersohn-Becker Museum.

Examination of the maternal self by Paula Modersohn-Becker.

Otto Dix. "Pregnant Woman" 1919

In “ Maternite” Charles Maurin expands on a genre he is already familiar with; that of mother and child. Although Maurin had many pieces dealing with the domestica of child rearing, “Maternite” is ambitious. It deals with the relationship of a mother and her child throughout is life span.

The piece is visually interesting and ambitious. It is collage like, while being impressionist at the same time. The colors are beautiful, but the whole scene feels golden and hazy. Each image is presenting a way so that none dominate, but the effect of the piece is overwhelming when taken as a whole. The minimal clothing and frequent use of nude figures suggests that the relationship is a timeless one, that will continue to repeat as children grow and take their mothers place.

Van Gogh and Millet

Paula Modersohn-Becker had the distinction of not only painting some of the first female nudes created by a woman, but also of painting the first female nude self-portraits. In her piece, “Self Portrait, Age 30. Sixth Wedding Day” she captures the ambivalence she felt towards trying to balance her artistic talent with the more conventional path.

At the time of Self Portrait” Modersohn-Becker was not pregnant, although she would be later that year. The piece is an act of research, as the artist considers which direction her life will go. The figure stares out of the painting with a look of consideration, her hands placed tentatively on her swollen belly. Her muddy colors and palette place her in the role of a modern woman grappling with new opportunities. Her nudity underlines the open inquiry with which the painting was made.

Modersohn-Becker had only a short 10 year career; she painted many portraits of mothers and children, frequently primal in their nudity. Like her contemporary, Otto Dix, she considered that portrayals of motherhood might fit into the larger primitivism narrative. Modersohn-Becker’s work maintained thoughtful facial expressions, showing that motherhood might be more complicated than the men around her would paint it.

Sources:

Noemi Mercer. “Conflicts as a Woman Artist; Paula Modersohn Self Portraits” Concordia undergraduate Journal of Art History. cujah.org/past-volumes/volume-1/essay-7

Otto Dix and the Pregnant Form

Joan Miro, "Maternity," 1924. National Gallery of Scotland

For Van Gogh, imitation was a form of artistic admiration. While staying in an asylum, he found it useful to copy black and white prints of Jean-Francois Millet's work. Their lack of color allowed him to consider what the colors should be, and it was in these decisions that he felt he used his best artistic skills. In this way, his reproductions were more of like translations, rather than replicas.

Below, there is a copy of both the Van Gogh translation and the original. Considering how similar the compositions are, and that Van Gogh was using a black and white copy, the color is where Van Gogh is trying to send out a message. The spring like colors help representation the youth of the family and the child. For them, life is just beginning. The anonymity of the features helps make this painting feel like a more universal experience, as well as focus on the emotional impact of the scene. The movement in the brushstrokes feels appropriate to the momentous action the child is about to take. Van Gogh’s bright scene may be similar to the Millet, but it also feels like it is created for a very different viewing experience.

Sources

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/64.165.2

In "Pregnant Woman" Otto Dix paints pregnancy in a way they represents the whole universe as well as the womb. Such a portrayal highlights the beliefs that Dix and his fellow German expressionists, in the role of woman as creator. Such a belief had strong ties to primitivism. Considering that Dix interacted with few female artists, and respected even less, such a simplistic belief is understandable.

In this work, we see a highly stylized image of a woman, juxtaposed into what appears to the heavens. Such images raise the idea of the very first creation, and therefore creation at its most basic level. This basic feeling is heightened by the use of primary colors. The figures seem to swirl slowly, suggesting space or the womb.

Dix painted this painting after having survived World War I. The Painting shows Dix hope for the future. This emotional quality of this piece help tie his past and present work together and show the impact of the war on the once idealistic Dix.

Sources:

Mary Acton. Learning to Look at Modern Art. page 15. Accessed Digitally at https://books.google.com/books?id=1XiHk50tHRkC&pg=PA101&lpg=PA101&dq=otto+dix+pregnant+woman+1919&source=bl&ots=ZhlSBMxhWX&sig=2I0_JXUWhHPjUnRdzMSPa9v8-XA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=oss1VcyvGcLkoATO24DoCQ&ved=0CCUQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=otto%20dix%20pregnant%20woman%201919&f=false

Giorgio de Chirico, "The Pregnant" 1920.

Mystical Maternity: Exploring Transformation Through Motherhood.

1890-1940

Jennifer Flake

Charles Maurin "Maternite" 1893

John French Sloan. "Gramercy Park" 1912. Private Collection

Mary Cassatt

Mary Cassatt seems to be the artistic who is most synonymous with motherhood. Consider her piece, “Mo

ther Combing Sarah’s Hair” This piece seems to be the ultimate statement about parental sacrifice. In the image, all the audience can see is the back of Sarah’s Mom’s Head. The mother’s hair is combing, but not ridiculously or elaborately so. Sarah’s face seems to be looking at her mother as a hint to her own future. The piece is not only a testament to Sarah’s mother’s love, but also hints at the type of responsible woman that young Sarah will grow to be.

Mary Cassatt may have created images filled with a picturesque home life, but she was also an impressive artist in her own right. By elevated the lives of women, and the work that many of Mary’s contemporaries did daily, into high art, Mary elevated women. She created a discussion around domestic tasks within her culture that had been missing.

Jean Francois Millet. "First Steps" . 1858. Lauren Rodgers Museum of Art

"First Steps after Millet" 1890. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.

Egon Schiele "Pregnant Woman Reclining" 1910.

Egon Schiele "Portrait of a Pregnant Woman" 1910

Egon Schiele, "Pregnant Woman and Death" 1911. Narodni Galerie, Prague, Czech Republic

Egon Schiele Essay

Egon Schiele was always seeking unconventional subjects for his expressive figure drawings. His first attempt to enter the maternity ward at a local hospital was met with a firm rejection, which is why his subsequent attempt he came armed with a painting, which was exchanged with the doctor for a chance to enter with his sketch pad.

In the drawing “Pregnant Woman Reclining” Schiele has captured not only her unusual form, but also the feeling of tension that would be present in the labor and delivery suite. There is a feeling of vulnerability in the slanted way she sits, and the way that her body is made diminutive behind her pregnant belly. She has a wan facial expression, discomfort evident in her face. Like other women portrayed in Schiele’s pregnancy series, she is not represented standing or in movement, but rather weighed down by the child she carries.

Schiele is unique among male artists because his images of pregnant women do more than merely glorify the creation of life. Schiele's pieces also capture the discomfort of pregnancy. He is able to demonstrate sympathy for his subjects, while at the same time making their unusual forms graceful within his drawings.

Amedeo Mondigliani, "Gypsy Woman and Child." 1919. National Gallery at Washington DC

Pablo Picasso. "Maternity" 1903. Picasso Museum

Mary Cassatt, "Mother Combing Sarah's Hair" c. 1901. Christies London.

Mary Cassatt, "Mother Jeanne Nursing Her Baby" 1907. Private Collection

Dorothea Lange. "Migrant Mother" 1936. Original at the Smithsonian

Avard Tennyson Fairbanks, "Mother and Child" 1928. Springville Art Museum

The topic of pregnancy and motherhood in art is not uniquely modern. In fact, it a subject that appears in some of the earliest prehistoric art and dominates the Christian religious art scene for a millenia. It is precisely because of this continuity that its role in new modern forms of art can help shed light how modern artists were taking risks and reconsidering how they conceptualized gender.

For some, like Otto Dix or Paula Modersohn-Becker, the questions raised by modern German movements, and their focus on primitivism, caused women to be put on a pedestal for their contribution to the next generation. The desire to return to a fabled past presents itself in the emotional, and elemental, way that pregnancy is represented. For female artists like Paula, the divide between their personal and professional life represented a heartbreaking bifurcation. As Paula lamented to her estranged husband in a letter, “poor little creature that I am, I can’t tell which path is the right one for me.”(1906). The birth of her daughter in 1907 would cost Paula her life,but not before she painted over 1000 works, many of which dealt openly and honestly with the contradictions of motherhood.

Paula’s paintings also dealt with the female body in a new way. While female nudes are no surprise, pregnant female nudes presented a new territory. Paula’s self portraits were some of the first, but they were soon joined by many other artists’ works. Each artist used bare pregnant bodies to express their own ideas about motherhood and femininity. Klimt showing the darkness and death that surrounds bringing a child into the world, while Schiele brings humor and empathy to his quick sketches. In Springville Utah, a whole town would debate Avard T. Fairbanks nude mother and child sculpture, and eventually remark that the woman needed no clothes since she was “Clothed in [the] righteousness” of nurturing maternity.

When considering nurturing maternity, it is impossible to leave out Mary Cassatt, whose images evoke a nostalgia even today. Cassatt was a serious artist, who chose to embrace both her motherhood and her art, by refusing to paint the same subjects as other artists around her. Her technique lends itself to remembering the hazy experiences of childhood.

Motherhood in modern art spans the ages. While the representations of pregnancy are novel, the images of childhood from a different era create an interesting commentary on what modern artists championed. When Dorothea Lange wanted to reach the nation about the dire circumstances of poor farmers, she chose to show a mother and her children. Her iconic image created sympathy and an appreciation for the way that the photography could be used to create art.

The images may feature desperate mothers, naked mothers, sensual mothers and uncomfortable mothers, but they never feature bad mothers. The representation of maternity in modern art may represent some arguments about what motherhood will mean in a new world, but all of the images are clear that this first human connection is something that will remain in art and in the modern era. Perhaps the images of motherhood are so powerful because they represent a fresh start for humanity, and the ultimate chance to shape a new and modern world.

Edvard Munch, "Alma Mater." 1911. Oslo University.