from Hypatia Volume 18, Number 4

Excerpt from

Thinking Through the Body: Women Artists and the Catholic Imagination

Eleanor Heartney

---

Permission to Copy

You may download, save, or print for your personal use without permission. If you wish to disseminate the electronic article, or to produce multiple copies for classroom or educational use, please request permission from:

Copyright Clearance Center
Professional Relations Department
222 Rosewood Drive
Danvers MA 01923

FAX: 978-750-4470/4744
Web address: www.copyright.com

For other permissions or reprint use contact:

Rights and Permissions, Journals Division
Indiana University Press
601 North Morton St.
Bloomington, IN 47404

FAX: 812 855-8507
E-mail: journals@indiana.edu

---

Mariology--the veneration of the Virgin Mary--exerts a profound influence on women artists from Catholic backgrounds. Internalizing the mixed signals Mary transmits about purity, female strength, and compassion, they reinterpret the stories and mythologies surrounding her in ways that allow them to explore the ambiguities of the female role in contemporary society while also examining their conflicts about their own sexuality.

Interviewer: Isn’t it true that growing up Catholic you’re cursed with the view of women either as virgins or whores?

Madonna: I was certainly aware of it, but I couldn’t understand why you couldn’t be both.

--Benson and Metz, The Madonna Companion

Why do artists who were raised as Catholics tend to create work that deals with sexuality in ways that the larger culture reads as transgressive? Are there religious roots to the way they deal with issues of body, identity, and sex? And what does it mean for women artists, in particular, to absorb the mixed messages of Catholicism?

It is commonplace to assume that religion and avant garde art are by definition adversaries. But in fact, far from being irrelevant or antithetical to advanced art, religion has been a powerful source of artistic inspiration for many contemporary artists. However, this influence does not always manifest itself in obvious ways, or in forms acceptable to the various religious establishments. Instead, such work reflects the contradictions that arise from the problematic place of religion in a secular society. And significantly, these contradictions appear most vividly in the work of artists who come from Catholic backgrounds.