Art is a universal form of human expression and throughout its long history has produced images that reflect emotion and intensity. This article elides much of the canon of Western Art. It begins with prehistoric societies, primarily matriarchal, who produced nature- respecting art. It traces elements of such art re-emerging centuries later in the work of artists of both genders. It finally discusses the longevity of matriarchy in Wales. Ancient art’s recent consideration appears with the advent of Pluralism and Feminism. From the 1960’s Pluralism embraced and valued diverse cultures as well as the art of differing ethnicity, ideologies, abilities, genders, ages, religions, economic and educational status. Feminist art re-evaluates women's contribution to the arts and their pro-environmental stances.
Aiding this were two Italian based art movements, Trans Avant-Gardism that promoted the return of figural and mythic imagery; essentially reintroducing emotion into the arts...Mimmo Paladino b.1948 is a leading proponent. Art Povera questioned the values of entrenched cultural institutes and extolled art free of convention and commodification. This opened the door to the art of many small nations which had been previously ignored by the international elites. Wales was amongst those countries that witnessed a new blossoming of art and a newfound confidence. Iwan Bala’s passionate writings on Welsh art including his notion of Custodial Aesthetics, have proven prescient and were at the time a massive fillip to contemporary art in Wales.
Primitive humankind existed in close harmony with nature that in turn fired their remarkable artistic efforts. Their world teemed with winged and hoofed game and rivers and seas were replete with fish. 36,000 years ago the astounding cave paintings at Altamira were created, one can almost hear the bison’s hoof beats, the noise, the smell, and the sheer majesty of the creatures depicted. The hunt was vital to sustain life which in turn gave rise to rituals and symbols; and from this came spirituality born of a deep respect for nature and its life-giving elements. The latter was also the wellspring for mother goddess worship and deified female imagery. The hunting scenes were in part recreations of the intensity of the chase which create a kind of preternatural “high” where the hunter has passed into a different dimension and become co-joined with nature. Hunting was not the exclusive realm of males however, asa 5000-year-old cave painting in a South Africa called ‘The White Lady of Branberg’ reveals. The painting, for instance, highlights a female figure who has a painted lower body and who is armed with a bow in one hand. Yet not only does she dominate the painting, but probably the society she lived in.
At the beginning of the 20th century African and ethnographic art was considered “primitive” but not in a derogatory sense. This is because, to many artists at least, the artworks had an unspoilt beauty and freedom to them, and from that time onwards it has continued to underpin much of modern art. The ancient world was familiar to the young person who was lovingly and ceremoniously buried at Paviland in South Wales Glamorgan some 30,000 years ago. The emotional intensity of his loss is evident as his remains were covered in red ochre and gifts of beads and shells. This oneness with nature that early humankind experienced can be aligned with Baruch Spinoza’s idea of “conalus”; the will to exist. All this however, has been ridiculed by the patriarchy as being uncivilised and superstitious.
In European art ancient matriarchal imagery was superseded by those displaying Christian or Classical themes. However, centuries later they were reprised from their long slumber by the likes of the Polish born artist Tamara de Lempicka (1898-1980). Her paintings of empowered women were in an unmistakable style and challenged the dominance of male artists. She was vilified because of her lifestyle, bisexuality, her success as a portrait painter to the rich and famous and the moral issues of the supposed lesbian content of her work. The ambiance of
her flower paintings are comparable to those of Georgia O’Keeffe’s. The Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) graphically exposed women’s suffering through her own body’s injuries in confronting paintings. The Cuban artist Ana Mendieta (1948-1985) is best known for her earth-body sculptures which were based on the spirituality of primitive rituals and a deep connection to the earth. Mendieta wanted to become one with the Earth, an extension of nature where she perceived the Earth itself as a womb. She created female forms out of mud, sand, grass and often used blood in these processes. Much of which was driven by her sense of loss after being exiled from her birthplace Cuba to the U.S.A. (in Wales we would know this as Hiraeth). Eventually she returned and executed a series of photo etchings concerning the fate of the original natives of Cuba, the Taino. This work raged against the fate of indigenous women and others who suffered from masculine aggression, including rape, during the Spanish Conquest of the Americas.
In North America Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) had along career and part of her output were large close-up depictions of flowers and despite her denials, many thought they represented vulvas, especially in her Lotus paintings. In Egyptian mythology this flower is the symbol of the womb and in Indian myth, they represent vulvas. O’Keeffe wanted to be recognised as an artist with no gender labels and refused to be described as a feminist. O’Keeffe’s paintings inspired the incredible five-year long art project undertaken by Judy Chicago (born 1939). The installation piece called ‘The Dinner Party’ memorialised famous women from history and mythology. With the assistance of embroiders, china porcelain painters and members of craft societies across America she created a triangular table with all the accoutrements such as tablecloths and place settings. The ceramic plates all displayed a stylised vagina representing individual sitters. A detailed book about this project listed hundreds of women amongst whom were the Welsh mythical deities, Cerridwen, Arianrhod and Blodeuwedd. A prime position was given to the greatest warrior queen of all time, Buddug, known in English as Boudicca; who after her humiliating public whipping and the rape of her daughters by the Romans, came within a whisker of driving them out of Celtic Britain.
The visual arts during the Romantic era in Britain were dominated by William Blake 1755-1827. Deeply religious, and despite his love of nature and its Creator he nevertheless had his own vision of Biblical events, especially the struggle between good and evil. For him imagination and reality had become one. In ‘Elohim Creating Adam’ the fall of man takes place in the act of creation and not later in the Garden of Eden which he wished to remain unsullied. In this work God forcefully transforms Adam into a human being and during this process a large worm is holding him down, obviously a portent of mortality. Blake’s followers were called The Ancients, one of whom was Samuel Palmer 1805-81, a mystic deeply influenced by Blake’s 1820 woodcuts based on Virgil’s pastoral poems reflecting Arcadian tranquillity. Based in Shoreham he created his own version of Heaven on Earth and captured the intensity of nature in works such as ‘Cornfield by Moonlight with Evening Star’ and ‘The Magical Apple Tree’. Another of the Ancients was Edward Calvert 1799-1883, whose work included mystic paganism strengthened by its erotic content as human love is included in his scenarios. Like The Ancients, the exaltation of nature in Welsh art is to be found in the works of Eleri Mills b.1955, David Jones 1895-1974 and James Campbell 1943-2019 who created what I called liquid landscapes that magnetise the viewer with their palpable intensity to such a degree that one wants to step into them.
Two sculptors of the 20th century who were seemingly connected to the primitive world were the British sculptor Henry Moore (1898-1986) and the Italian Marino Marini (1901-1980). Henry Moore’s work is dominated by powerful primitive forms and his monumental females capture the vitality and intensity of the ancient world and its goddesses which meld to be part of the landscape; women, fertility and nature are co-joined on an epic scale. Marino Marini’s bronze sculpture, ‘Rider’ (1951), for instance, goes beyond capturing the Lombardi peasants escape on horseback from a bombing raid in W.W. 2. It is about an earthy people displaying a procreative urge in the face of death.
The Irish born artist Francis Bacon 1909-1992, painted several series of frightening images where horrific distortions of faces and bodies, decarnated skulls and bared teeth abound. He called these the “bleak chronicles of the human condition” and that his imagery was the “brutality of fact”. His Screaming Pope series is a classic example of this disturbing intensity. His contemporary Lucien Freud 1922-2011 was a masterful and obsessive portrayer of human flesh with all its faults exemplified in ‘Benefit Supervisor Sleeping’; who looks like an ancient deity; no flawless Renaissance body here. More recently, Jenny Saville (born 1970), paints excoriating nudes and sometimes a double take is needed to appreciate the uncluttered reality of the flesh. Her subject matter often deals with body dysmorphia.
Clive Hicks-Jenkins (born 1951) has made an important contribution to Welsh art. One of his early paintings Winter Run depicts a classic figure running through the Welsh landscape with a horse’s skull on his head, like the horned shaman/sorcerer found in the Le Trois Freres cave. He expanded this theme in the haunting series the ‘Mari Llwyd’ which strike a deep emotional chord. These works come from the drama of his father’s passing which was preceded by the fear and confusion resulting from becoming tangled in hospital sheets that he thought were part of the trappings of the Mari Llwyd [A Welsh tradition where someone, dressed in white sheets and holding up horses skull (as you do), knocks on their neighbours doors: more can be read about this in Art Etcetera’s earlier issues]. This nightmarish occurrence recalled his childhood fear of the ritual running of the Mari Llwyd on New Years Eve and seeing the skeletal horses head at his bedroom window. Hicks-Jenkins’ love of theatre pervades much of his work. He is a tireless explorer of a myriad themes and says of his creations that “they are more real to him than the corporeal world”.
James Cope, a Welsh artist, made illustrations in the 1830’s for religious pamphlets and ballad sheets to be sold at fairs and marketplaces. His Adda ac Efa (Adam and Eve) depicts everyone other than the slightly nervous and glum Adam enjoying themselves. Even the serpent seems gleefully interested in the imminent seduction of Adam. This is an initiation scene about enticing Adam to join life and nature. Cope’s Eve is a powerful loving and inviting mother figure.
In Wales “Mam”, or mother, has a pivotal perennial presence. In coastal villages such as my birthplace they were revered. They were lovers, nurturers, business managers and fierce defenders of their families. All this whilst not knowing if the mariner breadwinners would survive their hazardous voyages, which frequently, as records show, they did not. Child mortality was another of their burdens and its most intense image was created by Kathe Kollwitz (1867- 1945) in her painting ‘Mother with Dead Child’. Pauperism and the workhouse faced many of them. They really were in the Boudicca tradition. The heroic Jemima Nicholas who played a major role in fending off the last French attempt to invade Britain at Abergwain (Fishguard) has been painted by Meinir Mathias in a work titled ‘You’ll Never Conquer Mam’ [who appeared in Edition IX]. Mathias has bought to life Welsh heroes in her very individual portraits, including the Rebecca Rioters and female members of Owain Glyndwr’s family. Christine Kinsey b.1942 has memorialised the stoicism of the Mams of Industrial South Wales families in imagery that project their power as lovers and nurturers as well positing them as icons for change and renewal. Iwan Bala b1956 also includes the Mam theme. A series called Hon, (Her) where the outline of Wales has turned into a woman reminiscent of ancient Venuses found at Laussel and Willendorf. At one level Hon is a protector figure who has steadfastly resisted military and cultural invasion. Bala also showed a new confident Welsh goddess in his image ‘Venedotia Mariona’.
The evolution of emotion and intensity in art has seen a profound transformation, from ancient cave paintings representing primal emotions to contemporary art works delving into complex psychological and social issues. The latter might have been avoided if the matriarchy had not been crushed, as Robert Graves espoused in his book ‘The White Goddess’. Throughout history, artists have employed various techniques, styles, and themes to evoke powerful emotional responses. Whether through the religious symbolism of ancient cave paintings, the spiritual visions of William Blake, the feminist explorations of Judy Chicago, or the psychological intensity of Francis Bacon, art has consistently served as a medium to convey the depths of human emotions and experiences. The works of many contemporary artists in Wales bring new perspectives and intense emotional experiences to the forefront. For the Welsh, the landscape of home is that of a voluptuous female with curves peaks and flanks. She exudes safety and love that is the genesis of Hiraeth which is a deep atavistic longing to be enfolded in her arms.
Meet our features writer, Dr. Terry Davies:
A lecturer for over forty years in various institutions across Australia,
Dr. Davies looks to observe the natural world and all of the flora, fauna, people, myths and legends to exist within it, through the use of ceramics.
Find out more about Dr. Davies on his website today: https://terrydaviesceramics.com/
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