Are mothers to blame?
I have examined the relationship between the abject and art through an investigation
into various artists’ projects. What I would like to emphasise here is
that this investigation should not lead the reader into the well known response
of “blaming” mothers for causing the maternal abject or conflict in
artists. It is intended as an examination of the point at which the artist and
the mother become separate entities, without either having any conscious awareness
of the natural laws governing this mother/ child relationship. Susan Maushardt
explains this unfortunate pitfall this way:
“Where motherhood has been the subject of serious, sustained enquiry, it
has been seen almost invariably as a cause, not an effect. This tendency is
particularly marked in the field of psychology, wherein researchers have historically
been more interested in apprehending mothers than comprehending them.”
1
Comprehension is in fact the driving force behind my investigation, which is
more a reading into my own psyche. This investigation aims at creating a field
of questions and answers in order to open the reading of my visual work. As
such I was driven to investigate whether some artists have been subjected to
a psychological reading of their work and whether the maternal abject featured
in their various projects. I will look at Frida Kahlo and Louise Bourgeois.
©2001 Mireille Astore
1. Maushart, Susan. The Mask of Motherhood, Random House, Sydney 1997