ART CITIES:Milan-The Great Mother

The exhibition “The Great Mother” composes an image of the mother and motherhood that is perhaps less comforting and far more complex and powerful, depicting a figure onto which Western society as a whole has projected individual and collective desires, anxieties, and aspirations for over a century.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Fondazione Nicola Trussardi Archive

Since the time when creativity was expressed through carvings on caves, motherhood always played a key role in the history of art, from the idols of the Stone Age through centuries of religious works depicting innumerable maternity scenes to the “Bad Girls” of the postfeminist era. The exhibition “The Great Mother” analyzes the iconography of motherhood through over 400 works by 139 artists, writers, and film directors covering a time range from 1900, the year of the publication of the emblematic work by Sigmund Freud “The interpretation of Dreams” up to the ‘90s. The works are exhibited together with many references like books and historic events, billboards following the same timeline. Built like a family photo album, the exhibition is going back and forth the historic events of the 20th Century and the main characters of history of art, from the Avant-garde to the third generation of feminism in the ‘90s, that the curator Massimiliano Gioni calls the “New Femminism”. A major section of the exhibition focuses on women in the early avant-garde movements, specifically, in Futurism, Dada, and Surrealism. Showing the work of women artists alongside the male artists who have dominated the histories of these movements, it highlights both contradictory and complementary attitudes that defined modernity while analyzing the radical transformations of gender roles that accompanied the profound economic and societal changes of the early twentieth century. The conceptual epicenter of the second part of the exhibition is a selection of works by Louise Bourgeois, who assimilated and transformed the influence of Surrealism, melding it with references to archaic cultures, to create a personal mythology of extraordinary symbolic power. Among the artists are: Carla Accardi, Paweł Althamer, Diane Arbus, Roland Barthes, Lynda Benglis, Louise Bourgeios, Constantin Brancusi, André Breton, Maurizio Cattelan, Salvador , Nikide Saint Phalle, Rineke Dijkstra, Marcel Duchamp, Lucio Fontana, Katharina Fritsch, Eva Hesse, Frida Kahlo, Jeff Koons, Barbara Kruger, Yayoi Kusama, Dorothea Lange, Marisa Merz, Annette Messager, Lee Miller, Yoko Ono, Meret Oppenheim, Francis Picabia, Thomas Schütte, Cindy Sherman, Kiki Smith, Rosemarie Trockel and Kara Walker.

Info: The Great Mother, Curator: Massimiliano Gioni, Palazzo Reale, Piazza Duomo 12, Milan, Duration: 2/8-15/11/15, Days & Hours: Mon: 14:30-19:30, Tue, Wed, Fri & Sun: 9:30-19:30, Thu & Sat: 9:30-22:30, www.milanmuseumguide.com