Overview

Maternal bodies in the visual arts brings images of the maternal and pregnant body into the centre of art-historical enquiry. By exploring religious, secular and scientific traditions as well as contemporary art practices, it shows the power of visual imagery in framing our understanding of maternal bodies and affirming or contesting prevailing maternal ideals. The book reassesses historical models and, in drawing on original case studies, shows how visual practices by artists may offer the means of reconfiguring the maternal. It will appeal to students, academics and researchers in art history, gender studies and cultural studies, as well as to general readers interested in the maternal and visual culture. -- .

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9780719083488

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Reviews

'This book is invaluable - providing an intricate level of scholarship at the intersection of aesthetics, history and politics. It treads delicately between historical analysis of the visualisation of the maternal and an embodied experience of looking. This book is vital for any visual artist, historian or social scientist seeking the rehabilitation of the maternal into art history and the practice of aesthetics.' Hermione Wiltshire, Senior Tutor in Photography, Royal College of Art 'Maternal bodies in the visual arts explores the possibilities and impossibilities of discursive, material and aesthetic representations and reconstructions of motherhood and the pregnant embodied. Betterton provides a dazzlingly erudite topography of multiple maternal bodies across history and across the western world, ranging from the sacred to the profane, from the public to the private and the dis/abled and out of place to culturally entrenched norms. She reflects on and resists what she calls the deep ambivalence towards maternal embodiment in feminisms, analysing the impact and effect this ambivalence has on both maternal artists and maternal bodies in the visual arts. Betterton asks difficult questions about which maternal bodies matter and which are disregarded, pushing the reader to confront their own assumptions and standpoint. Maternal bodies is a provocative and challenging study, and yet it is also highly accessible. I will be using it in my classes on the history of the body.' Cathy McClive, Ben Weider Chair in French Revolutionary Studies, Associate Professor in History, Florida State University -- .

'This book is invaluable - providing an intricate level of scholarship at the intersection of aesthetics, history and politics. It treads delicately between historical analysis of the visualisation of the maternal and an embodied experience of looking. This book is vital for any visual artist, historian or social scientist seeking the rehabilitation of the maternal into art history and the practice of aesthetics.' Hermione Wiltshire, Senior Tutor in Photography, Royal College of Art 'Maternal bodies in the visual arts explores the possibilities and impossibilities of discursive, material and aesthetic representations and reconstructions of motherhood and the pregnant embodied. Betterton provides a dazzlingly erudite topography of multiple maternal bodies across history and across the western world, ranging from the sacred to the profane, from the public to the private and the dis/abled and 'out of place' to culturally entrenched norms. She reflects on and resists what she calls the deep ambivalence towards maternal embodiment in feminisms, analysing the impact and effect this ambivalence has on both maternal artists and maternal bodies in the visual arts. Betterton asks difficult questions about which maternal bodies matter and which are disregarded, pushing the reader to confront their own assumptions and standpoint. Maternal bodies is a provocative and challenging study, and yet it is also highly accessible. I will be using it in my classes on the history of the body.' Cathy McClive, Ben Weider Chair in French Revolutionary Studies, Associate Professor in History, Florida State University -- .

'This book is invaluable - providing an intricate level of scholarship at the intersection of aesthetics, history and politics. It treads delicately between historical analysis of the visualisation of the maternal and an embodied experience of looking. This book is vital for any visual artist, historian or social scientist seeking the rehabilitation of the maternal into art history and the practice of aesthetics.' Hermione Wiltshire, Senior Tutor, Royal College of Art -- .

Author Information

Rosemary Betterton is Emeritus Professor in Women's Studies at Lancaster University

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