CHENNAI: A mother’s significance in this universe is non-negotiable. She cannot be confined to one day celebrations on Mother’s Day and set aside in the next, unlike many other celebratory days that are forgotten even before the sun sets on the empty podium that distributed awards in memory of the grand day. Her role has evolved over time, perhaps from the divine to the super mom avatar and these shifting representations of this ageless bond has always fascinated artists and found its way into canvases and stones throughout history.
Trust the Indus Valley Civilisation to provide us with the earliest imageries of a mother. Moms then, were not shown cooking or looking after their babies. They were depicted as Mother Goddesses to be worshipped. The subject of worship however, changed from culture to culture. For some, it was Mother Earth. For some others, it was a fierce female energy. And sometimes, it was a figurine with elaborate hips and a well endowed chest that was worshipped as the Mother of Fertility.
In the Christian world, innumerable depictions of the sacred mother or Mother Mary abound right from the 3rd century. Many artists have established their careers and lived off their portrayals of her. Artists like Leonardo da Vinci received a multitude of commissions to paint her. While early artists portrayed her as having descended from heaven, this slowly changed to a more humanised version of Mother Mary in the later years.
However, the image of a voluptuous mother nursing her child to symbolise fertility was replaced in the Western World by the idea of a Virgin mother. This biblical mother was sought after for divine guidance by patrons to adorn their homes and the artists of the time churned out so many renditions of her to cater to the demand.
Gradually, by the 17th century, artists started veering off divine mothers and leaning more towards the real ones. Many celebrated artists like Rembrandt and Dali started painting portraits of their own mothers. This less divinised maternal representation evolved along with the centuries. Gustav Klimt in the early 1900’s went a step further when he showed motherhood as merely being a part of the life cycle of a woman and a natural phenomenon stripped of its divinity, in his painting The Three Stages of a Woman, by illustrating an old woman nearing death, a young girl in her prime and a mother with her child.
When women took to art, these representations further shifted from glorified male perspectives to perceptions born of a woman’s life experiences. While Frida Kahlo painted the trauma of her miscarriages, Louise Bourgeois sculpted the ambiguous mother as an immense spider — both nourisher and protector as well as a destructive and an intimidating force.
In contemporary times, it could be said that motherhood has finally broken free of its stereotypes. Artists today, especially women artists, present the diverse truths of motherhood boldly and unapologetically. Their courageous artworks question the hitherto limited depictions of the mother in art history. And yet, through all these constantly transforming depictions, one common thread weaves together all the maternal representations through time — the universal love of a mother.