Artist Mother Research Articles

The Divine Feminine in Mormon Art

The Divine Feminine in Mormon Art

‘In the liveliest place, my mother's bosom, there was death’ – mother-daughter relationships in the work of Rachel Nemesh, Second-Generation Holocaust survivor

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the artwork of Israeli artist, Rachel Nemesh, a Second-Generation Holocaust Survivor. The assemblage to be discussed was exhibited in her solo exhibition, One Flesh, in 2020. The corpus analysis will be divided into four themes: (a) The Big Mother – works describing the elderly mother of Nemesh in a monumental manner; (b) Pieta versions – works focusing on bodily scenes of mother and daughter closely tangled; (c) Body-Parts: works showing randomly detached body organs; (d) Domestic Space – the artist's mother in her home. The study will be framed by two main fields: art centering on the Holocaust and feminist ideas focusing on mother-daughter relationships. Theoretical and visual examination will be enhanced by interviews with the artist aiming at profoundly decoding her artwork, claimed to resonate a feminine artistic language. An attempt to formulate an original interpretation of Holocaust Second-Generation's art, combined with a feminist point of view, will be made here. Rachel Nemesh's artwork is being investigated here for the very first time.

Made Visible: Contemporary South African Fashion and Identity curated by Kathryn Gunsch

Made Visible: Contemporary South African Fashion and Identity curated by Kathryn Gunsch

Portraits in Development: James Joyce, The Artist, and the Human Condition of Creativity

Portraits in Development:James Joyce, The Artist, and the Human Condition of Creativity Noel Arthur Davies Glover (bio) Prologue: The matter of a few holes A form which he knew for his mother's appeared far down in the room, standing in the doorway. In the gloom her excited face was crimson. A voice which he remembered as his mother's, a voice of a terrified human being, called his name. The form at the piano answered: —Yes? —Do you know anything about the body?... He heard his mother's voice addressing him excitedly like the voice of a messenger in a play: —What ought I do? There's some matter coming away from the hole in Isabel's … stomach … Did you ever hear of that happening? —I don't know, he answered trying to make sense of her words, trying to say them again to himself. —Ought I send for the doctor … Did you ever hear of that?... What ought I do? [End Page 131] —I don't know … What hole? —The hole … the hole we all have … here (Joyce, Stephen Hero 147). "The hole we all have … here," says the artist's mother in James Joyce's novel Stephen Hero, the first iteration of his Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. What hole, then? Mother and son reckon together in the quotation above with the question of the body's matter and with the matter of the body's meaning. How to make sense of the words that make sense of the matter that comes away from the body? Isn't that already what words are: matter coming away from a hole in the body? For Joyce's artist the body's limits seem to have a constitutive relationship to limits in understanding. The artist and his mother emerge as forms in relation to the sense of their words regarding a hole we all have. They seek an account of the body, of what it is and that which it is not, its matter and the matter of its hole. In a seminar on Joyce, Jacques Lacan is also drawn to the question of the relationship to the body: "In no [hu]man is the relationship with the body a straight-forward relationship—aside from the fact that the body has a few holes" (128). "According to Freud," Lacan continues, "this is even what must surely have put [the hu]man on the path of those abstract holes that have to do with the enunciating of anything whatsoever" (128). Straightforward about the body as a relation, says Lacan, is the fact of its holes. Obscure in this relation, however, is the question of enunciating the meaning of this fact. Can we describe literature, then, as an exceptional form of the enunciation of the fact of the body's holes, a style of enunciation that is also a relationship and a filling-in, a composition of matter coming away from a lack? Is literature, in other words, and precisely, the very matter of the few holes in the body? Jacques Derrida argues: No doubt literature, too, seems to aim toward the filling of a lack (a hole) in a whole that should not itself in its essence be missing (to) itself. But literature is also the exception to everything: at once the exception in the whole, the want-ofwholeness in the whole, and the exception to everything, that which exists by itself, alone, with nothing else, in exception to all. (42) Treated together, Joyce, the artist, and his figure of the artist, Stephen, comprise a body and a body of work, a certain wholeness, and the filling-in of a hole, and yet also the exception to its own wholeness, intending toward [End Page 132] a reader, and so containing even in the enunciation of the relation to the body's holes a few additional holes. If literature is what comes away from the holes in the subject, we are left with an additional question, as Garry Leonard asks in a Lacanian re-reading of Joyce's Dubliners: "Where do the holes in the subject's story of [themselves] come from?" (31). Accordingly, I am interested...

O rodonačelniku makedonske moderne skulpture

This paper discusses the life and work of Dima Todorovski, the founder of the Macedonian modern sculpture. Dimo Todorovski was born in Thessaloniki in 1910. He finished the Art School, the sculpture department, in Belgrade in 1935. He lived and worked in Skopje from 1942 until his death in 1983. During his career, he made an impressive number of sculptures among which are portraits, lovely female nudes, figures of men in motion, and other pieces related to the WWII. His best pieces include: The Portrait of the Artist's Mother, A Peasant Woman Portrait, The Pit, The Macedonian Pieta, A Girl, A monument in honour of Koco Racin, The Miladinov Brothers, St. Kliment Ohridski.

In a Heartbeat Collaboration of Artist Mother, Pathologist Daughter

In a Heartbeat Collaboration of Artist Mother, Pathologist Daughter

Whistler and His Mother: An Unexpected Relationship (review)

Reviewed by: Whistler and His Mother: An Unexpected Relationship Anne Koval (bio) Whistler and His Mother: An Unexpected Relationship, by Sarah Walden; pp. 304. London: Gibson Square; Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2003, £15.99, $35.00. Can one sustain a whole book on the subject of a single painting? It is a difficult task, and for the restorer, who spends months or years with a painting, the work literally looms larger than life. This myopic lens can distort the viewing, yet Sarah Walden, in Whistler and [End Page 350] His Mother, provides a larger context for seeing anew. Walden offers a unique approach to the extensive literature on James McNeill Whistler. The title, Whistler and His Mother: An Unexpected Relationship, is in some ways misleading, but it is also telling, as the book is largely about the history of the painting widely known as "Whistler's Mother." To Walden, the "Mother" is emphatically the painting Arrangement in Grey and Black, no. 1: Portrait of the Artist's Mother (1871), a work she painstakingly restored. Of the nine chapters, only one concerns the relationship Whistler had with his mother; the portrait acts instead as the pivotal point around which Walden shapes her story. Reading the book, I found myself conflicted. As a Whistler specialist I was aware that not all the material was accurate, and at times it was glaringly incorrect. I found Walden's reliance on outdated texts, and her disregard for more recent and critical interpretations of Whistler's work, a major oversight. The book also could have been copyedited more thoroughly, as typographical errors interrupted the reading. But the writing is lively and the author's position unique. For a lay reader, or even a nineteenth-century generalist, the book is approachable and quite fascinating. Walden writes in a refreshing style, devoid of the technical jargon often associated with the scientific nature of restoration. She is a historian with an ability to see the whole picture at once, rather than only the minutiae—a rare skill, as the restorer spends much of his or her time looking closely at the work. Walden ably offers both the conservator's insight into the painting and the story that necessarily accompanies the work. Walden is well aware of the consequences of Whistler's lack of traditional training and the complex history of the painting, which essentially become the context for the book. One of Walden's more interesting points emerges from the nature of her restoration. As she uncovers the work she becomes aware of the painting's inconsistencies, its inherent mystery. The canvas acts as a narrative on which she pins her story. In her introduction she states, "It was as if the picture, like the portrait of Dorian Grey in the story of Oscar Wilde, had some inner life of its own that would be mysteriously disrupted at the first touch to its fragile, forbidding surface" (9–10). She hints at the complexity of this work, from its delicate surface to Whistler's unorthodox approach to painting. The painting is a mystery, from its unpredictable beginnings in Aestheticism to its subsequent history as an icon of American motherhood. For Walden, the portrait's complexity resides in its restoration. As she uncovered its yellowed skin of varnish she was able to reveal the hidden text. What becomes apparent to Walden is that the work, with all its failings as a traditionally painted masterpiece, belies its avant-garde origins. Whistler's unconventional handling of paint, though frustrating for the restorer, "foreshadowed later experiments in painting, not the least in his own country" (18). As the sensitive restorer, Walden provides an insider's look at the questions raised during restoration and attempts to provide answers about one of the more elusive of painters. Walden is at her best in the introduction and the chapter dedicated to the close restoration of the painting, in which she speaks of problems she encountered and raises the important question of how far a conservator can go with the restoration. Even after careful restoration, the portrait "is a perfect example of the limits of the possible, and of the desirable, in restoration" (197). With cleaning...

Whistler's Mother: an American icon

In 1871 James McNeill Whistler painted the famous portrait of his mother, Arrangement in Grey and Black: Portrait of the Painter's Mother. It enjoyed a colourful history: threatened by rejection at the Royal Academy, pawned by the artist, bought by the Musee du Luxembourg in Paris, it now hangs in the Musee d'Orsay, Paris. Through exhibitions, publications and caricatures, it has become one of the most familiar images of the century, and a great American icon. This illustrated volume looks at the genesis and history of the portrait, and examines the relationship between mother and son that inspired the painting. It explores the growth of Whistler's Mother as a potent image, its appearance inspiring mass pilgrimages and adulation, and looks more broadly at the portrait of the artist's mother as a productive source of artistic inspiration following Whistler. The book is published to coincide with the centenary of Whistler's death in 2003, marked by a range of exhibitions internationally.

SYMPOSIUM: Putting the Future in Planning

Tony de Carlo's image Amidst the Sprawl was created with the area just west of downtown Los Angeles in mind. It is one of the city's oldest neighborhoods and home to the artist, with older single-family homes giving way to freeways and the persistent inching westward of downtown. Its depiction of Latinos and mixed land uses brings to mind just some of the challenges and opportunities facing planners who try to put the future back into planning, as described in this issue's Longer View symposium. The artist, a Los Angeles native, is the son of an artist mother and has been creating since childhood. A self-taught artist, he exhibits his work regularly throughout the U.S. More of his work can be viewed on his Web site at <http://www.tonydecarlo.com>. The planning field has been criticized in recent years for neglecting time and the future in favor of present-focused decisions about space. How should planners proceed to put the future back in planning? Each of the four authors contributing to this symposium brings a different perspective to bear. Sam Cole reviews the contributions of contemporary work in the futures field and provides a helpful resource list. Martin Wachs discusses the similarities and differences between forecasting and envisioning, and he provides a commentary on what this means for the identity of planning. Dowell Myers presents a demographic futures perspective that emphasizes alternative interpretations of prospective demo-graphic trends. He illustrates this with regard to California's growing Latino population and the impacts it will have on building denser and more compact cities. Linda Dalton provides a commentary on the preceding papers and finds ample room for expanding planners' emphasis on the future, both in practice and in accredited planning education. Returning to an emphasis on the future could help to make planning seem more appealing and relevant to both citizens and decision makers.

The Artist's Mother: Portraits and Homages

The Artist's Mother: Portraits and Homages

"The Nürnberg Stove" as an Artistic Fairy Tale

"The Nürnberg Stove" as an Artistic Fairy Tale Chang Charity (bio) In the 1920s, almost every school child in America knew the story of the Nürnberg stove—mainly because it was one of the Little Blue Books series widely distributed at a nickel apiece. It is an artistic fairy tale, or fantasy, in which Ouida, one of the most prolific and controversial writers of the nineteenth century, intermingles personal elements with those of universal meaning. This appealing tale, rich in motif and meaning, first appeared in 1882 in Bimbi, the best-known and perhaps the most successful of Ouida's three collections for children.1 Described by its author as "the best children's book since Alice in Wonderland,"2Bimbiis a collection of nine stories, each provocative enough for a separate study. The present essay takes up "The Nürnberg Stove," which is, in some respects at least, the most fascinating and complex of the nine. An artistic fairy tale is the conscious creation of a conscious creator. It is a fantasy with fairy-tale elements. In her creation of "The Nürnberg Stove," Ouida has used the familiar motives of a dangerous journey and the achievement of a near-impossible goal to convey her own personal vision of the relationships of people to themselves and to each other. The stove itself is simply a stage prop, a main ornament if you will, around which Ouida invents detail about a very sensitive young boy and his response to the problems and pressures of life. Little August's fantasy world during his maturation is not radically unlike that of children in any era, or even of adults, for that matter, so if Ouida has done her work well she will bring her protagonist after his long imaginary journey back to the real world and to himself. We shall see. Let us for a moment consider Bimbi,the collection of stories containing "The Nürnberg Stove." Why did Ouida write and publish the stories in Bimbi? The answer is twofold. First of all, although she did not normally like children, Ouida made an exception in the case of Bertie Danyell, whose artist mother had done a rather flattering portrait of her. The bond between Bertie and Ouida was undoubtedly genuine, since it was for Bertie that she first invented the charming tales later published in Bimbi. Secondly, Ouida, who until her death was possessed of a streak of vanity, was determined to dedicate the published work to a child—no less than the little Italian [End Page 148] crown prince who later was to become ex-King Victor Emmanuel III. The copy of Bimbiwhich the little prince received was bound in white vellum and bore a copy of his monogram. But to return to "The Nürnberg Stove"—why did Ouida write this unusual tale? The answer no doubt lies in the story itself. What then are its themes and what are its meanings? To find answers to these questions one must consider both the story and, to a certain extent, the childhood and personality of its author. Louise de La Ramée (1839-1908), by preference called Ouida, was herself a fanciful child who continued to live, even in adult life, more "in her fancies than in anything around her" (Bigland, p. 25). She possessed an intense feeling for natural beauty, for landscapes, for all things that exist out of doors, for wind, for sun and rain. Only a deeply introspective child would, as she sometimes had been known to do, have brought home from a country walk a stone picked up off the road, saying that it was a poor neglected and unloved thing. And this she would treat as though it were alive, talking to it, endowing it with feelings and treating it as though it had an individuality. (Ffrench, p. 11) And so it is with little August, the protagonist of "The Nürnberg Stove." He, too, is a fanciful child and, like Ouida, introspective—always "thinking, thinking, thinking" (Bimbi, p. 20). Surely he treats the Nürnberg stove as if it has feelings (Bimbi, p. 16) : Oh, dear Hirschvogel! you are almost...