Excerpts from my dissertation 'Mother Dearest' An examination of the representation of Motherhood in contemporary art from the perspective of the artist as mother
Within the visual arts Motherhood fights being accepted as a relevant and intellectual subject; the fact that the outcome of maternity is children is problematic as the subject of children has ever been fraught with the risk of sentimentalism, and the work being marginalized. Since the commodification of childhood in the nineteenth century it has been feminised, and as Romanticism waned so the subject was considered intellectually marginal and was left behind by artists and art historians (Higonnet, 1998, 39). With the advent of Modernism women were more than ever associated with domesticity and childhood became a subject for women. As Griselda Pollock (1980, 5) has noted, one of the reasons Mary Cassat’s work has been so less visible than that of her impressionist peers is partly because of her oeuvre.
Modernism’s patriarchal viewpoint became the norm and the female viewpoint was confirmed as that of the ‘other’ and subsidiary, and today the male perception is still accepted as the universal vision (Snyder-Ott, 1995, 70). Motherhood has been placed within the domestic sphere which also contains the subsidiary subjects of both women and children. When looking at art by mothers about motherhood does the politics of difference mobilise against their work because it focuses on the otherness of the artist as woman and mother, to the exclusion of any serious discussion of their practice?
Maternal subjectivity has historically been seen as the antithesis for creative production, the western mythology of the artist has been idealized and modelled on the Romantic movements powerful definition of the artist as a male outcast, sacrificing everything, creating only out of a profound passion (Apostolos-Cappadonna, 1995, 2), and although today motherhood is not necessarily seen as requiring all of a woman’s attention, do we fear that we may compromise our status as serious artists if we bring attention to the fact that a huge amount of commitment, energy, and emotion is poured into something other than our art, proof of non-professionalism?
The feminist writer E. Kaplan (1992, 39) argues the fact that the position of ‘mother’ has been subordinated and fetishized, and that it is important for it not to be the all consuming entirety of the woman, that a woman should be constituted as ’mother’ only when directly interacting with her child. I agree with the feminist viewpoint that maternity should not be an essentialized quality, yet I think it is impossible to simplify it down to the extent she may wish, for this denies it it’s existence as a life-changing often all-consuming experience, both physically and emotionally. Even when you are not with your child you are forever a parent. At this point I should mention that of course motherhood can on some levels be equated to parenthood, the effects also being profound on a father; however for the purpose of this essay I shall be concentrating on female artists, how they make work regarding maternity, and how being a mother can effect the work they make on the subject. As Kaplan points out, (1992, 197) ‘fatherhood is chosen, motherhood is demanded’.
One cannot examine maternity without taking into account feminism, however when we consider feminism there is the sense of a devalualisation of motherhood; Kristeva has been critical that feminism never managed to prolong a satisfactory discourse on motherhood, and that it has always taken an ambivalent standpoint on the subject (McAfee, 2004). Kristeva embraces the fact that a woman does not have to be the same as a man, and looks for a way to reconcile women’s desire to have both children and careers, ‘if maternity is to be guilt-free, this journey needs to be undertaken without masochism and without annihilating one’s affective, intellectual, and professional personality, either. In this way, maternity becomes a true creative act,’ (Kristeva, 1995, quoted in McAfee, 2004, 101).
Of course within both society and the art world women have begun to close the gender gap, however after the birth of her daughter Dumas has been famously quoted ‘I’m not one of the boys any more’ (Dumas, 1998, 64); biologically becoming a mother forever separates you, the gender gap may be gradually closing but motherhood defiantly puts her foot in the door.