If you create or own art
concerning menstruation or menopause
and are interested in showing it on
thesepages (it's free!), contact MUM
Marie Claire magazine
(Italian edition) featured several
of the above artists in an article about
this
museum and menstruation in 2003. The
newspaper Corriere della Sera (Io Donna
magazine) (Milan, Italy) and the magazine
Dishy (Turkey) showed some of
the artists in 2005 in articles about this
museum.
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The Art of Menstruation at
the Museum of Menstruation and
Women's Health
Orant
by Joseph Tonna
Mr. Tonna seems to have created
the top artwork specifically for
the
record album cover (small picture)
entitled "The Effect of Estrogens
in the Menopause," copyright 1960
by Ayerst Laboratories, which he
also designed. (Maybe this should
be called The
Art
of Not Menstruating.)
A blurb on the cover explains
the figure as "familiar to art
historians
and archaeologists as the Orant,
[and] is often found in early
frescoes
and mosaics. For both pagan and
Christian, it symbolized
supplication for
deliverance. The Orant
portrayed here represents
womankind's
appeal for deliverance from the
age-old afflictions of the
menopause."
(For more on menopausal
afflictions, a controversial
subject, see the lecture,
26 June 1998, also
sponsored by a pharmaceuticals
company.)
The first edition of the Oxford
English Dictionary adds that the
Church
regarded the orant as especially
significant because "it recalled
the
position of the Saviour upon the
cross." Compare Female
Crucifixion, by Martina
Hoffman.
Webster's Third International
Dictionary reports that the orant
was
"used in early Christian art as a
symbol of the faithful
dead."
By the way, all eight speakers
on this LP are men.
My thanks, again, to Kathleen O'Grady,
a friend of this museum from the
beginning, author of Sweet
Secrets:
Stories of Menstruation,
doctoral candidate at the
University
of Cambridge (England), and
creator of the MUM list
of books about menstruation
in English. She writes that she
saw this
album at a garage sale and
"couldn't resist" buying it for 25
cents. She then kindly mailed it
to her MUM.
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Next
artist: Jessica
Wagner
See all the
artists in the links in
the left-hand
column.
If you create or own art
concerning menstruation or
menopause and
are interested in showing it on
thesepages (it's free!), contact
MUM
See
also
Bea Nettles' art The
Moonsisters
© 1997 Harry
Finley. It is illegal to reproduce
or distribute
work on this Web site in any
manner or medium without written
permission
of the author. Please report
suspected violations to hfinley@mum.org
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