At Christmas, at least in the Christian world, there is more thought of birth, as a special child was born on the 24th by a special mother, but also many people who, when they were children, felt they were unlucky enough to receive presents only once - not at all few artists like the French painter Pierre Soulages, who is 102 years old today.

If the Mannheim Kunsthalle now devotes itself to motherhood in all its breadth, all men and despisers of the 1970s, when the subject was the most debated topic, could wave aside in boredom.

That would be an annoyingly missed opportunity.

Stefan Trinks

Editor in the features section.

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After all, the subject of “mother” in art is one that not only touches on the “origin of life”, as the exhibition's subtitle reads, but also reflects the origin of art itself. The oldest artifacts of mankind are known to be carved out of bone or clay images of women, including many pregnant women. Venus von Willendorf, who embodies fertility, cannot be seen in Mannheim, but countless Cycladic idols and pre-Columbian mother figures from 1000 BC. With the beginning of human representation, however, the beginning of a difference between what has been seen and what has been felt, which has been practiced again and again, coincides: the lifelike head of a child protrudes from the belly of one of the pre-Columbian figurines,however, the body of the woman giving birth is abstracted like a figure by Henry Moore (of which no fewer than six bronze figures can be seen in the show). In the case of another earthen mother, 2300 years old, the head is just an abstract handle. To put it more pointedly, one could formulate a crossover principle: while the life that comes into the world is always concretely and naturalistically designed, the higher-level life-giving authority is treated more abstractly. And over millennia.the higher-level life-giving authority is treated more abstractly. And over millennia.the higher-level life-giving authority is treated more abstractly. And over millennia.

The beautiful "Madonna with Child" by the early Dutchman Dierick Bouts, hung as an eye-catcher at the beginning of the exhibition, sums up the many paradoxes of the second half of the fifteenth century. The Blessed Mother in her sky-blue lapis lazuli cloak and the perfect face with a high forehead remains aloof and remote; as Bouts did not place the Madonna on a background of gold leaf, but painted it around her head with gold paint, its contour is unusually angular, the gold sheen, representing God himself, seems to flow into her head. The child also looks like an adult on the face, his hair, which is already quite long, is neatly combed and parted, the feet crossed in anticipation of death.Clarified like a jeweler, it examines the inclusions of the rock crystal ball in his hand, which his mother actually put around his neck together with blood-red coral pearls as a talisman chain and a symbol of her seven pains and joys.

For centuries, such meaningful representations of the “Mother of God with Child” were formative for art, and time and again new images arose from this constellation, such as the Pietà, in which the dead son usually lies in the mother's lap, as with Michelangelo (the iconography of the Pietà , the farewell of the mother to the child, but also the

Sponsa

bride from the groom is unfortunately left out in Mannheim).

The fact that such paradoxes of age still inspired surrealists like Magritte is shown in his “Spirit of Geometry” from 1936: A bald baby's head rests on broad mother's shoulders, while the head of the baby in the giant baby's arms is crowned by a woman's head.