Art and Visual Culture - Mother and Child

Art and Visual Culture

Assignment 3: Mother and Child

3/7/06

ASSIGNMENT 3:

Mother and Child

Throughout art history, artists have used the theme of mother and child for

religious purposes, for cultural purposes, and for expressing the strong

relationship between mother and child.

You can find examples mother and child in the art of Egyptians, Greeks, and

Romans. Medieval art and art of the Reniassance often depicts Mary and the

Christ child to communicate bible stories for those that could not read.

Tribes of Africa such as the Dogon tribe, Asian art, Native American art, and

even folk art often depict a non-religious representation of the mother and

child. Many photographs taken during the Great Depression or during

wartime show the anguish, poverty, and yet the bonds between the mother

and child.

The mother and child theme can be found in EVERY culture and in EVERY

society througout human history.

For this assignment, you are to find TWO examples of mother and child in

art...paintings, drawings, sculpture, photographs...from two diffferent time

period and two different culture. Then compare and contrast the art in your

essay.

PART 1

Present and explain each of the art pieces you chose. Discuss the social,

cultural, or religious purpose for each piece you chose.

PART 2

Identify the design principles evident in each piece. Also describe the visual

cues for each piece you chose, explaining how visual cues conveys the

feeling and relationship between the mother and child. Which piece conveys

the strongest message? Why?

PART 3

How have the artists (or the people/person who made the art) used the

mother and child relationship in each work to express feelings and emotions

and to tell a story? What story do they each tell? (You can download the

images to include with your essay.)

Check the COURSE GUIDE for the DUE DATE!

Mary Cassatt

American, 1844 - 1926

Mother and Child, c. 1905

oil on canvas, 92.1 x 73.7 cm (36 1/4 x 29 in.)

Chester Dale Collection

1963.10.98

From the Tour: Mary Cassatt вЂ" Selected Paintings

Mother and Child represents a theme that Mary Cassatt often painted throughout her career as an artist. Creating complex, impressionistic lighting effects, a floor mirror reflects the scene in a hazy, indistinct manner.

The models for Mother and Child may have been neighbors of Cassatt's near her country home outside of Paris. She often asked local women to sit for her, feeling that professional models posed self-consciously. For the sittings, Cassatt tended to dress the women in gowns she had bought from well-known Paris clothiers. As in most of her paintings, Cassatt does not glamorize or sentimentalize her subjects; instead she presents them as wholesome, attractive individuals.

When Cassatt painted Mother and Child she was at the height of her artistic success. She drew on her many years of experience, working with ease and assurance. She captured the varying effects of light: pure strokes of green and gold suggest the sun flooding the artist's studio on a summer day, and glistening touches of pale yellow highlight hair, dress, and furniture.

LONDON, ENGLAND.-In a jam-packed Bonhams saleroom in New Bond Street, the most important sculpture by Henry Moore to appear at auction in recent years sold for Ð'Ј1, 069,600 (with premium) after intense bidding today. It sold in the room to a private collector and smashed the world auction record for a unique carving by Henry Moore. Mother and Child, 1931, described by Moore himself as “one of my best earlier pieces” was purchased soon after Henry Moore’s exhibition at the Leicester Galleries in the same year, for just Ð'Ј18вЂ"18 shillings. Also in the sale, a reclining figure by Henry Moore sold for over double its estimate in the room at Ð'Ј308,000. Henry Moore’s Mother & Child, 1931 is the most expensive 20th century work of art to be sold in London this year. The entire sale achieved just over 3 million.

Bonhams’ Head of Modern British Art, Matthew Bradbury said, “It is an immense privilege to have sold this beautiful Mother & Child sculpture. The enormous price reflects the quality of