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by Malagoli
This article orginally appeared in Conscience,
published by Catholics for a Free Choice, Spring (2003) p. 35; republished here
with permission of the artist and publisher.
MALAGOLI is a Belgian artist and a professor of
pictorial art. Her drawings on religious themes are regularly published by the
French Catholic monthly review Golias and she has had exhibitions in Belgium
and France.
The Pregnant Virgin
©Malagoli,
2002
SINCE JESUS WAS BORN OF A WOMAN, a woman was pregnant
with Jesus.
For this woman, the pregnancy must have been what it is
for every woman: a world. A world of feelings and thoughts. A succession and
crisscrossing of moments of glory and moments of doubt, times of courage and
weariness. An experience where the feeling of being inhabited by a mystery
gives way to the prosaic reality, where the physical reality of the pregnant
body magnifies to a mystical elevation.
Mary's pregnancy must have been all of this. It must have
been more than this, due to the Annunciation. How does one believe that the
Annunciation put Mary's pregnancy above all others as a sort of "angelic"
pregnancy? The son was exposed to temptation and doubt. How can one believe
that his mother was spared these trials? The Annunciation did not simplify
Mary's pregnancy. It most likely complicated it, and at least intensified
it.
The pregnancy of the Virgin: a sublime, but also worrying
experience. A subject, that at first glance is susceptible to stimulating
artistic inspiration.
So where, in religious icons, do we see a representation
of the pregnant Virgin? We go from the Annunciation to Mother and Child, from
the announcement of a child to the child already being born. So where is the
mother carrying this child and preparing for it to be born? Where is the woman
carrying the Word made Flesh, her flesh?
What obstacles, what inhibitions, what embarrassments
prevented the representation of this theme? If it involves censorship, it's
surely censorship in a quasi-psychoanalytical sense: not a prohibition from
expressing what we think or imagine, but inhibition of thinking or
imagining.
If there was this prohibition in the past, there are
reasons that might explain why. These reasons are linked most notably to the
social status of women.
But how does one explain why even today, as soon as one
presents to the public — as I have done —a work representing the
pregnant Virgin, one is met with reactions of surprise, unease and scandal? At
least, once one manages to show it, notably in a private gallery. Because, if
one plans on showing this piece in an open space —a cultural center, the
foyer of a theatre, a business —one runs the risk of being rejected by
those in charge (not necessarily people of faith, by the way) who say they are
scared of offending the "religious sentiments" of the public. As if it were a
blasphemous theme...
There are also perhaps explanations that call upon the
imposed, normative nature of religious iconography. These explanations still
leave the following unexplained: That a religion that believes in the Word made
Flesh prohibits itself from imagining and representing this flesh that welcomed
the Word.
Nè Eva,
nemmeno Maria
L’ordinazione
sacerdotale delle donne nella Chiesa cattolica
Autore: J. Wijngaards
Edizioni La Meridiana 2002,
via G.
Di Vittorio, 7 - 70056 Molfetta (BA) - tel. 080/3346971
pagine: 232; ISBN:
88-87507-63-5; Prezzo: Euro 15,00.
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