First Things: Sculpture and Maternity (No. 44)

Description

Imagery of birth and fertility is ancient and culturally widespread, as could be expected of a subject that is at the origin of life for humans. From Paleolithic Europe to Cycladic Greece, from nineteenth-century Africa to twentieth-century Britain, extraordinary sculptures have imbued the pregnant body with a locus of potentiality, mystery and risk.

But what links sculpture and motherhood? Is the maternal to be found in a body, a position or a function? What are we actually looking for when we speak of a maternal form?

In this essay, Anne M Wagner considers the special ties that bind the condition of maternity - subject to change both bodily and socially - to the enduring artistic medium of sculpture.

This essay was written to accompany the exhibition Mother Figure: Modernist Maternities from the Leeds Sculpture Collections (21 September - 5 December 2004, the Upper Sculpture Study Gallery, Leeds Art Gallery).

There may be signs of age or yellowing to the pages as these are original copies from the publishing year. This is reflected in the pricing of the text.