Feminist Art and the Maternal by Andrea Liss
Feminist motherhood is a surprisingly unexplored subject. In fact, feminism and motherhood have been often thought of as incompatible. Profound, provocative, and innovative, Feminist Art and the Maternal is the first work to critically examine the dilemmas and promises of representing feminist motherhood in contemporary art and visual culture. Andrea Liss skillfully incorporates theory with passionate personal reflections on the maternal, and in doing so she advances a fresh and necessary perspective on both feminism and art. Offering new research on works by well-known and emerging artists who approach feminist motherhood issues from their own knowledge and experiences, Liss explores a wide range of examples from the challenging to the taboo, including Mary KellyOCOs Post-Partum Document, Mierle Laderman UkelesOCOs Maintenance Art projects, Ren(r)e CoxOCOs YoOCO Mama portraits, and Ngozi OnwurahOCOs film The Body Beautiful. Liss considers traditional characteristics that mothers are assumed to possess, such as nurturing, empathy, and sacrifice for their childrenOCoqualities that paradoxically have negatively defined women as OC sentimentalOCOOCoand assertively revalues them within both motherhood and feminism. Throughout, she deftly intertwines theoretical analysis with the arresting and enlightening first-person voices of artist-mothers and their children.Putting forth an original ethics of feminism and the maternalOCohow to be in the place of the other and inside oneOCOs self, how to care for another and oneOCOs selfOCoLiss reconceives the mother-child relationship as a model for relations among races, genders, and ages and radically reinterprets maternal traits as vital forms of social, artistic, and political address."
ISBN: 9780816666270
Publication Date: 2009-01-01
Reconciling Art and Mothering by
Reconciling Art and Mothering contributes a chorus of new voices to the burgeoning body of scholarship on art and the maternal and, for the first time, focuses exclusively on maternal representations and experiences within visual art throughout the world. This innovative essay collection joins the voices of practicing artists with those of art historians, acknowledging the fluidity of those categories. The twenty-five essays of Reconciling Art and Mothering are grouped into two sections, the first written by art historians and the second by artists. Art historians reflect on the work of artists addressing motherhood-including Marguerite Gérard, Chana Orloff, and Renée Cox-from the early nineteenth century to the present day. Contributions by contemporary artist-mothers, such as Gail Rebhan, Denise Ferris, and Myrel Chernick, point to the influence of past generations of artist-mothers, to the inspiration found in the work of maternally minded literary and cultural theorists, and to attempts to broaden definitions of maternity. Working against a hegemonic construction of motherhood, the contributors discuss complex and diverse feminist mothering experiences, from maternal ambivalence to queer mothering to quests for self-fulfillment. The essays address mothering experiences around the globe, with contributors hailing from North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia.
ISBN: 9781409426134Publication Date: 2012-09-14
Mothernism by
At the intersection of feminism, science fiction, and disco, "Mothernism" aims to locate the mother-shaped hole in contemporary art and discourse.
ISBN: 9780988418554Publication Date: 2014-08-17
