Feminist art and the maternal

200 Pages·2009·5.698 MB·English

by  Liss, Andrea

FEMINIST ART AND THE MATERNAL
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F E M I N I S T A R T
A N D T H E M AT E R N A L
Andrea Liss
University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis
London
Portions of “Th e Body in Question: Rethinking Motherhood, Alterity, and Desire,” New Feminist Criticism:
Art, Identity, Action, ed. Joanna Frueh, Cassandra Langer, and Arlene Raven (New York: HarperCollins,
1994), appear throughout this book. Portions of chapters 3 and 4 were previously published as “Maternal
Rites: Feminist Strategies,” n. paradoxa 14 (Summer 2004): 24–31. Portions of chapter 4 were previously
published in “Who Cares for Mothers?” FRAME–WORK 8, no. 2 (1997), a special issue “Processing Labor:
Labor as Process,” guest edited by Steven Callis and Mario Ontiveros. An earlier version of chapter 5 appeared
as “Black Bodies in Evidence: Maternal Visibility in Renée Cox’s Family Portraits,” in Th e Familial Gaze, ed.
Marianne Hirsch (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1999); copyright 1999 by the Trustees
of Dartmouth College; reprinted by permission of the University Press of New England. An earlier version
of chapter 6 was published as “Revisioning the Maternal Body: Loving in Diff erence in Ngozi Onwurah’s Th e
Body Beautiful,” in Mothers and Daughters: Connection, Empowerment, and Transformation, ed. Andrea O’Reilly
and Sharon Abbey (Lanhan, Md., and Toronto: Rowman and Littlefi eld, and Centre for Feminist Research,
York University, 2002).
Th e poem “Gettin Down to Get Over,” by June Jordan, was fi rst published in June Jordan, New Days: Poems
of Exile and Return (New York: Emerson Hall, 1974), and later in June Jordan, Naming Our Destiny: New and
Selected Poems (New York: Th under’s Mouth Press, 1989); copyright 1989 by June Jordan; reprinted with kind
permission from the June M. Jordan Literary Trust.
Every eff ort has been made to obtain permission to reproduce previously published material in this book. If
any proper acknowledgment has not been made, we encourage copyright holders to contact the publisher.
Copyright 2009 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior
written permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Th ird Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401- 2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Liss, Andrea.
Feminist art and the maternal / Andrea Liss.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8166-4622-7 (hc : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8166-4623-4 (pb : alk. paper)
1. Motherhood in art. 2. Feminism and art. 3. Women artists. 4. Arts, Modern—20th century. I. Title.
NX652.M64L57 2009
704’.042—dc22
2008035895
Printed in the United States of America on acid-f ree paper
Th e University of Minnesota is an equal- opportunity educator and employer.
15 14 13 12 11 10 09 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
I dedicate this book to the memory
of my fi erce and loving maternal grandmother,
Anna Friedman,
and to the oceanic joys in Miles’s future
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
 Th inking (M)otherwise: New Bodies of Knowledge xiii
1. Breaching the Taboo 1
2. Intersubjectivities: Mary Kelly’s Post- Partum Document 23
3. Maternal CARE: Mierle Laderman Ukeles’s Maintenance Art 43
4. Mamas Out of Place 69
5. Making the Maternal Visible: Renée Cox’s Family Portraits 93
6. Loving in Diff erence: Ngozi Onwurah’s
Mother–Daughter Refl ections 109
  Cultural and Maternal Notes
on Living through Breast Cancer 121
7. Maternal Mourning: A Collaboration between
Civia Rosenberg and May Stevens 125
In Lieu of a Conclusion: Maternal Passions 145
Notes 155
Bibliography 163
Index 171
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Acknowledgments
Many people and organizations have sustained the work embodied in this
book. To those who have given so much to me, I thank you here.
I would like to express my gratitude to those who have supported my
maternal thinking through invitations to contribute to books they edited
and conferences they organized. Knowing what was on my mind, Joanna
Frueh invited me to write an essay for a book she was coediting, New
Feminist Criticism: Art, Identity, Action; “Th e Body in Question: Rethinking
Motherhood, Alterity, and Desire” has been crucial to the foundation of
my work. Myrel Chernick reprinted a shorter and edited version of this
essay in her catalog to the exhibition she curated, Maternal Metaphors, at
the Rochester Contemporary Art Center, Rochester, New York, in 2004,
and the essay will have a new life in her forthcoming book, coedited with
Jenny Klein, Th e M Word: Real Mothers in Contemporary Art. I appreci-
ate the invitation to present my talk “Maternal Ethics in a Contemporary
Context” through the Center for Feminist Research, University of Southern
California, in 1996. I was pleased to contribute my essay “Who Cares for
Mothers?” to the issue of FRAME–WORK, “Processing Labor: Labor as
Process,” guest edited by Steven Callis and Mario Ontiveros. For making
the joint Art History and Studio Art Session I organized, “Feminist Art and
Maternal Representation,” at the College Art Association conference in
ix