This morning I decided to look a
bit into mothers portrayed in art, since today is Mother’s Day. I’m very
excited about Mother’s Day this year, since it’s my very first one. I was hoping
my seven week old daughter would decide to scream and cry a little less today
as a Mother’s Day present, but she seemed unimpressed by the holiday and
continued on with business as usual. Oh well, c’est la vie.
I simply googled “motherhood in
art” and came across this four and a half minute lecture from the Metropolitan
Museum of Art. (Find it here: http://www.metmuseum.org/connections/motherhood/).
This is the perfect snippet of information to watch over morning coffee. The
lecturer, Jean Sorabella, talked a bit about how she rarely sees an image where it
appears that the mother has work to do- most of the mothers she comes across in
works of art seem to have perfect angel children. These moms have it all
together. Of course, this is not reality, and the idealizations of the moms in
the works Sorabella presented did irk me a bit. It gave me the same kind of
feeling of annoyance I get when someone asks me if my newborn is sleeping through the night
yet. People have been asking me this since she was just days old, when of
course she was not sleeping through the night. But, everyone seems very concerned
that my daughter causes the least amount of disruption in my life. Obviously,
anyone who has kids or has spent much time around people who do have kids knows
that kids cause a lot of disruption. It’s just the way it is. But the art
Sorabella presented seemed to follow the general trend I’ve seen of idealizing
motherhood instead of portraying it as the hard work that it is. This kind of
annoyed me, but I might be particularly sensitive to this right now since I'm a first time mom with a newborn and a bit overwhelmed with the responsibility.
The lecture did introduce me to
Mary Cassatt, whose works mainly portray motherhood. I did a little bit of
quick research on Cassatt and I enjoyed viewing some of her pieces.
Coincedentally, she was an impressionist, so she fits right in with the works I’ve
been looking into over the last few days. Below is one of her works I came
across and liked, titled Summertime.
With summer looming around the corner, it seemed appropriate and put a smile on
my face.
Enjoy, and Happy Mother’s Day to
all the moms out there!
Xoxo,
Diana
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