This episode engages you with objects that express and manifest the Divine Feminine through the visual expression in Western Art. You will learn what the Divine Feminine is and explore the ways objects of art express the sacred within. (Venus of Willendorf!) We take a deeper dive with contemporary artist Katie Fogg, including a conversation with the artist.
My friend and spiritual seeker, Janice Juliano inspires this visual journey. She is not a studio artist–she is a social worker and through her interest in spirituality and her own spiritual path founded an Art Center that encompasses a part of her vision to create a space for the healing arts, a space to facilitate healing for all who enter. Learn more at Art Center at the Red Barn.
The image is from the Goddess series by early feminist artist Mary Edelson, “Goddess Head.”
Script: Welcome to Episode 112: Today will engage with objects that express and manifest the Divine Feminine through the visual expression in Western Art.
This visual journey is inspired by my friend and spiritual seeker Janice Juliano. Divine Feminine has shaped a spiritual path for Janice. She is not a studio artist–she is a social worker and through her interest in spirituality and her own spiritual path founded an Art Center that encompasses a part of her vision to create a space for the healing arts, a space to facilitate healing for all who enter. Since 2018 The Red Barn in Durham, Connecticut evolved into a space for holistic practitioners, including artists. It is a “place of caring, compassion, good will, and harmony.” The collaborative community includes psychotherapists, licensed massage therapists, Reiki practitioners, yoga teachers, registered dietitian and shamanic sound healer. Their purpose is to facilitate healing for their clients. One modality of healing at the Red Barn is their Art Center. It is in this space “creativity flourishes through a variety of art classes by local and emerging artists. The Art Center provides a safe space in a healing environment for a deepened understanding of ourselves through the process of making art.” One artist that offers studio arts classes came on my podcast in episode 105, the textile artist Jean Rill Alberto and later in this episode I will dive into the work of another member of the Red Barn’s collaborative community, the painter Katie Fogg.
Janice and I developed a friendship through our shared interest in art, women and our personal conversations often were centered on the Divine Feminine through the visual expression. The Divine Feminine is the spiritual concept that there exists a feminine counterpart to the patriarchal and masculine worship structures that have long dominated organized religions in Western cultures, namely Judaism, Christianity and Islamic. For the purposes of this episode, I am going to focus on Christianity. In the predominately Christian religious heritage of Europe and the United States, the traditional images of God is a single, all-powerful male god. If you trace that history from Catholicism to Protestant Reformation of 16th century Europe, there was a “extensive effort to repress all female symbols of the divine. Figures like Mary and female saints are swept away by church Reformers in favor of an exclusive focus on God the Father and his crucified son. It is this Protestant history that purged all female symbols of the divine.” It during the feminist movement, from the 1970s to today, that we see a reappropriation of empowering female symbols. They paved the way for contemporary feminine mystics and visionary artists as they challenged the dominant patriarchal ideologies of Judeo-Christianity. “over the last few decades, there has been an increasing interest in women’s history, women’s spirituality, and women’s personal and social empowerment, as well as ancient history, indigenous cultures and alternative spirituality. Reactions to perceived or experienced imbalances in social and religious life, as well as a general disconnection from nature, native wisdom and community. (cite)
One of the central messages they are trying to communicate is that there was a time on earth when people worshiped goddesses in preference to gods, when the feminine was held to be sacred and when women were accorded a greater social status than they enjoy now. As writer Gloria Feman Orenstein writes, “The Goddess symbol…reminds women that our legitimate history has been buried and through its excavation we are learning how short the patriarchal period in human history has been in comparison with the 30,000 or more years of matristic history in which goddess-centered cultures flourished in central Europe.” The central narrative of the Divine Feminine is revealed in its images.
Let’s explore four examples of images or objects, one from the prehistoric world, one from early Christianity and then we will take a giant leap forward into an early feminist work and finally contemporary artists. One of the challenges of distilling such an encompassing topic is deciding on the objects. I am only touching the surface of this huge arena of the Divine Feminine in the visual arts—this dive is to hopefully inspire you to explore further.
Female as sacred is represented in female statuettes dating to Paleolithic or Neolithic times. The single most popular image is probably the Venus of Willendorf; discovered in Austria. From the Brooklyn Museum: “Many societies have worshipped the Fertile Goddess as the supreme site of fertility, motherhood, and the creation of life. Famous pieces, Venus of Willendorf may have been worshipped as goddesses. She is very small, just over 4 inches tall, made from limestone, the emphasis of the work is on female anatomy, large breasts, buttocks and round, full body. Except for the head, it is globe shaped, faceless, the entire surface is incised with hatch marks. Scholars have suggested that they may have been sculpted by women looking down at their own bodies. These figures are assumed to be pregnant because Paleolithic and Neolithic (around 10,000 B.C.E.) people did not have enough fatty foods in their diet to be able to attain that weight. These types of female votive figures were widely produced and worshipped by very early civilizations at a time when men were only depicted as infants or children.
In Early Christianity, on of the earliest depictions of the Madonna and Child is found on the wall of the Catacombs of Priscilla, located underneath Rome’s Via Salaris in what used to be a quarry. The image shows Mary nursing the baby Jesus sitting on her lap and looking at the viewer. –The depiction infers character traits that the artists wanted to stress–from nurturing and motherly love to obedience to God The artwork dates to the 3rd century, back when Christianity was still an illegal practice in Imperial Rome. Early Christians would meet in the catacombs to bury their dead and pray at the tombs of the martyrs, which is why artwork from this age can tell us a lot about the ideals and values of the very first Christian communities. (V. M. Traverso–journalist) Once Christianity becomes the official religion of the Roman Empire, traditional depictions of Mary or Blessed Mother surface, including iconic works of the Byzantine period; Mary holding the infant Jesus, in some she is enthroned by angels. She wears a halo and sits in a background of gold. Mary as a subject would become common for more than a millennium in Western art– Marian images are prevalent in the Catholic faith today. Catholic feminists argue, however, that the Virgin Mary “became an effective instrument of female subjection. ” Carolyn Osiek from Beyond Anger: One Being a Feminist in the Church writes Mary provided Catholic women “impossible ideal to which woman could attain, with whom all women are invited to feel inadequate.” These ideals are centered on submission and purity.”
It is early feminist artists like Mary Beth Edelson, who reimagine a history where femininity is privileged–In her Goddess Art series Edelson uses china marker and oil paint to transform photographs into universal symbols of ritual feminine power. “Goddess Head” is a black and white photograph of naked woman, she is behind a boulder and we only see her body from the waist up, her arms lifted in a power pose, her head is replaced with a large seashell–lifted arms and shell display the subject’s Goddess qualities. Edelson said the goddess is “an internalized, sacred metaphor for an expanded and generous understanding of wisdom, power and the eternal universe” (Patin & McLerran 61). By portraying Goddesses in her work, Edelson is reclaiming her female identity and portraying it as a powerful and sacred force.
She challenges traditions of Western art and the Catholic church in another work, from 1972 “Some Living American Women Artists/Last Supper.” The artist edits Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic portrait of Christ and his disciples enjoying a family meal, replacing the men with the images of 69 female artists including Helen Frankenthaler, Lee Krasner, and Louise Bourgeois. Georgia O’Keeffe head takes the place of Jesus. “The piece challenged religion’s tradition of oppressing women while acknowledging the feminine forces whose names and faces are too often excluded from history. The collage work sparked the debate between religious communities and feminists.”(MOMA)
The women’s spirituality movement is alive today, –Contemporary female artists fill the void of Goddess imagery and wisdom in the West by providing images in a continuous rebirthing of the Divine Feminine. As Janice Juliano, the inspiration for this episode shared, “It is in our rediscovery of our history as women where the Goddess was revered and our magic was honored.”
Katie Fogg, a contemporary painter and resident artist at the Art Center uses art as a “path of exploration on her spiritual journey. Through her artistic practice, using “Tracism,” also known as “music art” spelled backwards, Fogg composes figures in oil and acrylics. She captures their essence anchored in the outer world and transcends this figures into depictions of their inner beings. She creates these figures using the technique borrowed from the Surrealists called “automatism”–gaining access from the unconscious mind. Fogg employs automatism while immersed in music and silence, “the enjoyment of the zone enhances rhythmic quality–works are full of emotion, fantastical entities, a “world moving towards unification.” In my favorite work of this series, Spirit of Unity, we see the outlines of a figure, the torso is in a simple dress, arms are by her side, hands behind the back. The head is myriad of mesmerizing lines, we see the frame of a head, but no recognizable features, it is as if the head was split open to revel a fury of lines and circuits. I am going to stop here because Fogg’s works employ her inner emotions expressed through rapid brushstrokes an aspect of her figure’s inner life. Let’s hear from her and her voice—in a moment my conversation with Katie Fogg.