Materialised Meanings and Artistic Representations of Mary I & II
Abstracts session I
Moving objects: materialised meanings of Mary in a pilgrimage to Lourdes
Dr. Catrien Notermans
RadboudUniversityNijmegen, Faculty of Social Science, Department of Anthropology
In the context of a pilgrimage to Lourdes, the materiality of Mary is expressed in different domains: the home and the pilgrimage site. Both places are also interconnected through the circulation of religious objects, moving from the home to the sacred place and back home. I will focus on these religious objects and argue that they move between places but also move the heart as they contain very intimate stories about personal life experiences. Through focussing on moving objects, I will demonstrate how religious objects and images of Mary in pilgrims’ personal journeys to Lourdes differ from objects and images in the master narratives of Lourdes.
Mary crushing the serpent: protective icon of women in Guadeloupe
Drs. Jeanine Klungel
RadboudUniversityNijmegen, Faculty of Social Science, Department of Anthropology
Women in Guadeloupe actively embrace the icon of Mary crushing the serpent: they nail her image to the walls of their homes, place her statue at the centre of their chapels, and pray with rosaries containing her medal. They do not only confide all their intimate sorrows to her, but also demand her to crush all evil forces that cross their path. In return for dutiful care, the raging Virgin protects Guadeloupe women from violators by appearing to them in awkward situations and by offering them the gift of sight to detect harmful entities. In view of Isabelle Sangely’s life, I will discuss the relations between Guadeloupe women and the protective icon of the stunning Lady and ask how their biographies are intimately intertwined.
Making images of Mary on the internet
Prof.dr. Willy Jansen
RadboudUniversityNijmegen, Faculty of Social Science, Institute for Gender Studies
Historically, Mary has been represented through a variety of images. Church authorities, local religious leaders and lay people had different stakes in setting and dissiminating models of Mary. The traditional media, such as magazines, newspapers, radio and t.v. provided a channel to spread uniform and relative stable artistic and less artistic images of Mary under the guidance of religious institutions like the Vatican. The power negotiations concerning hegemonic representations of Mary have in the last decades taken a different turn by the arrival of internet. The new media are seen by some as a democratizing force, giving individual believers, provided they have a computer and a connection to the Web, more than before definitional powers. Technical innovations enable active and opinionated individuals to contribute significantly to interactive religious innovations. This paper asks whether indeed a shift in power relations can be noted in the construction of images of Mary due to Internet and how recent developments influence this. What effect, if any, does the virtual creation of Marian art have, both for the changes in images and for the agents involved? How are gender, ethnic and national issues entwined with the new processes of making images of Mary? Two cases of internet constructions of visions of Mary in Africa will be taken as example to discuss these issues.
Abstracts session II
God called a girl: Mary, Protestants, and American culture
Prof. Colleen McDannell
University of Utah
One of the many reflections on Mel Gibson’s blockbuster, The Passion of the Christ was that evangelical Protestants in the United States had waken up to the importance of Mary in the life of Jesus. While there is no question that the popularity of Gibson’s film stimulated interest in Mary, Gibson was no cultural innovator. This paper argues that Protestants in the United States have continually constructed material and visual representations of Mary. These representations typically have occurred in cultural spaces where ordained clergy have little control—in homes, cemeteries, classrooms, on the pages of commercial books and magazines, in the movies. While non-Catholics typically stress the humanity of Mary to diminish Catholic supernaturalism, the Protestant Virgin Mother is nonetheless intriguing.
During the mid-nineteenth century, under the impact of European romanticism, American Protestants claimed the Madonna. The middle-class used her image to assert their good taste, their domestic sentiments, and their pious commitments. With the creation of a commercial Victorian Christmas, Mary and baby Jesus were moved to center stage to counter “secular” Santa Claus. Even by the end of the century as Victorianism was waning, the conservative focus on the person of Jesus often included his Mother. Sunday School literature and ladies’ fiction spun fanciful depictions of the domestic life Nazareth. During 1930s and 40s, African Americans caught up in the “Spiritualist” movement included statues of the Virgin Mary in their worship services. By 1943 Mary was so much a part of pop culture that a Hollywood movie about the Marian apparitions at Lourdes, The Song of Bernadette, was nominated for twelve Academy Awards and won four. The “momism” of the suburban fifties, the secular feminism of the seventies, and the evangelical post-feminism of the eighties, all represented Mary in ways that underscored her use in their political and theological agendas. Mel Gibson’s contribution to this history of popular representations of Mary is notable but not unique. The film calls on the long-standing Protestant stress on the humanity of Mary and combines it with the Catholic “Sorrowful Mother” to produce a Virgin Mother of heroic proportions.
INTERMEZZO:
Choir Diva Maria: Songs of Mary, o.l.v. Herma Timmer
Elizabeth revisited, or:
The maternal body of Mary in doctrine and devotional art.
Dr. Grietje Dresen
RadboudUniversityNijmegen, Faculty of Theology, Institute for Genderstudies
In the history of Roman Catholic doctrine and theology, Mother Mary became increasingly bodiless. The main doctrinal reason to consider Mary’s body was to repudiate it as a human body, and especially as maternal body (cf. Julia Kristeva). In devotion and devotional art, however, Mary is preferably represented as a mother. In one particular type of representations, depicting the visit Mary paid to her pregnant cousin Elizabeth, we even see Mary expecting, like her cousin. The theological reason to immortalize their meeting was, on the one hand, Elizabeth’s early recognition of the Saviour, witness her words of Hail Mary (“blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb”) and, on the other hand, Mary’s Song of praise to God, the Magnificat, attributed to her as a response to her cousin’s hailing. Contrary to this theological remembrance of their meeting, referring to the significance of Father and Son, in the numerous artistic representations of it may be found quite different reminiscences. We follow the trail of these maternal reminiscences through medieval and modern art
INTERMEZZO:
Choir Diva Maria: Songs of Mary, o.l.v. Herma Timmer