Wednesday, May 4, 2011

In Honor of Moms

This blog post is in honor of all the mom's in the world! Some of my fellow mommy bloggers are taking part in this blogging adventure (Blog Hop)!



Pieta, Michaelangelo
I am a mom and like all mom's I am always terrified that  my baby might get hurt......Whenever she is not with me and the phone rings, I am pretty sure something awful has happened to her! To my horror I am becoming a "helicopter" mom! You know, the  one that always hover and rushes to their children when they get even the slightest boo-boo (I talk baby talk these day......including horsey and doggy)!! I don't  like my own  paranoia and my daughter who has recently turned three is starting to resent my intrusions! She even called me "bad mommy" when I asked her to get down from the jungle jim!!

Whenever I think of a mom suffering because of her child getting hurt, I think of Madonna and Christ! I am not a religious person at all(and not even sure of the historical occerance of the event)  but I shudder when I think of a mother having to witness the massacre of her child....... And to me one of the best work of art that captures the pathos is the Pieta by Michaelangelo Buenorati. I consider the sculpture as one of the most beautiful one in the world.....Someone of course might ask why would a sculpture that shows Mary as a young and unperturbed mom should make me cry everytime I look at it!

Of course I can go on and on........ But in short, the contradictions in the sculpture makes it so interesting. In terms of formal contradiction: even though it is a very symetrical work of art with a pyrmaidal structure as well as the circuler pattern created by the vortex of Mary's drapery, the drama comes from the interaction of the figures! Only a master can marry the stable formal elements with the disproportionate figures and make it work. If we look at the sculpture carefully and think about the relationship between the two figures, we can see how disproportionate the figures are! A grown man cannot fit on the lap of a woman in real life. But by creating the volume in Mary's drapery, Michaelangelo has effectively turned the viewer's attention from that fact!
Another contradiction is that the artist has represented Mary as a young girl rather than a older woman that Mary should be (and Christ as a much older and gaunt man). The artist has an explanation for this! He is known to have said this about his interpretation of Mary's youth:
Do you not know that chaste women stay fresh much more than those who are not chaste? How much more in the case of the Virgin, who had never experienced the least lascivious desire that might change her body?

In other words, Mary, being untouched by any sin, is shown as the young innocent with all her virtues intact! In one art historical interpretation, it has been pointed out that we are experiencing two different passage of time: a young Mary actually holding the Christ child and being content, while the viewer is experiencing the future. Anyway, I really did not want to talk about other's interpretation but my feelings about this work. A serene Mary holding the  dead Christ is probably a symbol of resignation and the belief the mother has of her Son's resurrection. That face in its other worldly beauty is puryfing and calming to our soul.....

 I would like to be resigned to the fact that things will happen in my daughter's life that I will not be able to fix. She will be hurt by friends and perhaps her dreams will not be fulfilled..... But as a mom I will always get hurt when she gets hurt, whether physically or emotionally! I wish that, this representation of Mother and Child will give me courage to deal with whatever  befalls my child. If the God's choosen vessel Mary could endure the pain of holding her son's broken body, perhaps, I should be able to endure my baby's bruised knee........
(My heart goes out to all moms around the world who has lost their children through meaningless violance.........)
And here are my fellow Blogger Mom's with their takes an "mommyhood"! Lets start the Blog Hop(Claudine Itner's brain child!)
  • May 1st – Claudine Intner

  • May 2nd – Melissa Liban

  • May 3rd – Lynn Krawczyk

  • May 4th – Ishita Bandyo

  • May 5th – Jeri Greenberg

  • May 6th – Kathleen Mattox

  • May 8th – Amanda Ruth

  • May 9th – Judi Hurwitt

  • May 10th – Kathleen Murphy

  • May 11th – Hannah Phelps

  • May 12th – Helen Hiebert

  • May 14th – Hannah Klaus Hunter

  • May 15th – Claudine Intner