Paintings Of Mom by 33 Famous Artists For Mother's Day.

In honor of Mother's Day, I wanted to re-run one of my favorite original posts. "Famous Artists Paint Their Mothers" are thirty-three portraits of the female forebearers of various respected and well-known painters. The portraits range from the 15th century to the present* - excluding paintings of The Madonna, arguably the most famous of all mothers.

Most artists, at one time or another, have painted a portrait of the woman from whose womb they sprang. Some are flattering, some are not and others are very personal or intimate -- yet all are an homage to the parent whose role we celebrate today, Sunday, May 13th.

There are so many, I'd originally broken this up into two posts, but today I am featuring all of them in one post - paintings of artists' mothers prior to the 20th century by the likes of Whistler, Van Gogh, Cezanne and Picasso as well as more recent homages to Mom by such artists as Rockwell, Wood, Hopper, Dali, Hockney, and Warhol.

A good place to start would be with the world's most well-known "Mother" artwork, that of by James McNeill Whistler, painted in 1871:

above: James McNeill Whistler, Whistler's Mother 1871, Musée d'Orsay, Paris

The following portraits are presented in chronological order from the earliest to the most recent. While it's true that many of these artists painted multiple sittings of their mothers (e.g. Lautrec, Cassat, and Cezanne), I chose to share those I found to be the most compelling.

Albrecht Durer, portrait of Barbara Durere, the artist's mother, 1490:

Guido Reni, Portrait of the Artist's Mother, 1612:

Rembrandt, Portrait of the Artist's Mother, 1630:

Sir Thomas Lawrence, Portrait (sketch) of Lucy Lawrence, the Artist's mother, 1797:

Alfred Rethel, portrait of the Artist's Mother, 1836:

Camille Corot, Madame Corot, the Artist's Mother, Born Marie-Francoise Oberson, 1838:

Pierre Renoir, Portrait of the Artist's Mother, 1860:

Paul Cezanne, Portrait of the Artist's Mother, 1866-67:

Mary Cassat, the Artist's Mother reading Le Figaro, 1878:

Edouard Manet, Mother in the garden at Bellevue, 1880:
Georges Seurat, Aquatint of the artist's mother, 1883:

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Countess Adele Zoe de Toulouse Lautrec, The Artist's Mother, 1883:

Vincent Van Gogh, Portrait of the Artist's Mother, October, 1888:

Paul Gauguin, Portrait of Aline Gauguin, 1890:

Pablo Picasso, Portrait of the Artist's Mother, 1896:

Edvard Much, The Dead Mother (the artist's mother died when he was five from tuberculosis), 1899:

Franz Marc, portrait of his mother, 1902:

Georgio di Chirico, portrait of the artist's mother, 1911:

Egon Shiele, Mother Sleeping, 1911:

Juan Gris, portrait of the artist's mother, 1912:

Edward Hopper, Elizabeth Griffiths Smith Hopper, the artist's mother, 1916:

Salvador Dali, portrait of the artist's mother, 1920:

Norman Rockwell's Mother Tucking Children Into Bed (for which his mother Irene was the model), 1921:

Grant Wood, Woman With Plants (his mother), 1929:

Arshile Gorky, portrait of the artist's mother, 1936:

William H. Johnson, Mom Alice, 1944:

Alice Neel, My Mother, 1952:

Lucian Freud, The Painter's Mother, 1973:

Andy Warhol, silkscreen of his mother, Julia Warhola, 1974 :

David Hockney, Mum, 1985:

Daphne Todd, Last Portrait Of Mother, 2009:

David Kassan, portrait of the artist's mother, 2010:


*You will note there are very few, if any, portraits artist's mothers in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries because so much art at that time was dominated by religious paintings and portraits commissioned by the wealthy.

Happy Mother's Day!

Nina Levy Compels Us With More Creepiness at the Salamatina Gallery

above: Nina Levy, Boy With Eyes, 2011 (cropped)

Artist Nina Levy recently exhibited “Related Forms” at the Salamantina Gallery in New York. Her first exhibition in New York in five years, it featured two new sculptures, a new series of photographs, and a selection of Levy’s work from the last ten years.

This has prompted me to reprise a post I wrote on her work a few years back and share the new pieces with you along with much of her work.


above: Nina Levy, Boy With Fist, 2011

Artist Nina Levy has been living and working in Williamsburg, Brooklyn since 1996. A prolific photographer and sculptor, her work has been widely exhibited across the United States, including The National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. where her life-sized portraits of four artists' heads hung as part of the gallery reopening in 2007 (shown below):


above: a view of the installation in the National Portrait Gallery in the Smithsonian, 2007

above: life-sized self-portrait sculpture Spectator, 2002 (also used in the 2007 National Portrait Gallery installation)

An artist who has long worked with body parts made of oil-painted resin, gypsum or clay, fiberglass, cast polyurethane and other materials for over a decade to create large outdoor sculptures, indoor installations, portrait heads, and self-portraits in many forms, created her own series of family portraits or 'family resemblance' from 2006-2008.


above: Woman with huge fist (self-portrait) 2008

She has a very impressive education, graduating Phi Beta Kappa and Summa Cum Laude from Yale with a B.A. in English and Art in 1989 and she received a Masters in Fine Arts from The University of Chicago in 1993. She's also the mother of two young boys, whom are frequently the subjects of her recent photographs. But these aren't the kind of family photos you're used to seeing embellishing hallways and mantels.


above: family resemblance, 30" x 24" EDITION OF 6 + A.P.

To say that her portraits of herself and her family, consisting largely of her two sons, Archer, now 8 and Ansel, now 4, are bizarre is an understatement. Creepy and disturbing may be more appropriate descriptors for some viewers.


above: Nina's older son Archer with giant prosthetic baby head,2007

above: Nina's youngest son Ansel with giant prosthetic baby head, 2007

What's respectable, and certainly unexpected nowadays, is that there is no digital manipulation involved in her photographs. She actually sculpts the enlarged body parts or prostheses and then juxtaposes them with her subjects, so that the size relationships you see are actual real physical representations.



Babies eating babies, children cradling what look like lifeless bodies and small-framed, vulnerable boys sporting hulk-like hands and steroidal limbs are the subjects of some of her these recent photos. Here's a look at much of her family portraits and family resemblance photographs, 2006-2008:





Nina explains: "I have been interested in using fragmentation and shifts in scale to explore both discomfort with the human body and with other people"








"I started to make photographs, mostly featuring myself interacting with a series of sculptural props and prosthetics that I modeled and fabricated from clay or plaster and cast in resin," she says.



"I am now the mother of two small boys, and the primary subject of my work has become my own dysfunctional parenting and the often overwhelming intensity of small children"






"Ansel, however, boycotted my last photo shoot," says Nina, "and is under-represented... but thanks to the promise of a highly desirable set of action figures, Archer was willing to assist me"







"The photographs were, and still remain, very low tech - there is no digital manipulation," says Nina. "All of the objects and people in the images exist exactly as they appear."



Special thanks to the UK's Telegraph for the quotes from the interview with Nina.

HER PORTRAIT COMMISSIONS:

Her commissioned portrait heads are available cast in resin, ultracal or gypsum painted with oils and in more traditional treatments and materials (bronze, plaster, cement). Please contact Nina Levy for more information.

See her website here.
To check out her work prior to 2002, go here.


SALAMATINA GALLERY
2210 Northern Boulevard
Manhasset, NY 11030
AMERICANA MANHASSET
GALLERY HOURS: Mon - Sat 10-6/Thur 10-7/Sun 12-6
T: 516 439 4471