Magda, I think I agree with you that images like this are meant to stimulate,
rather than to literally represent.

This painting in particular is by a guy, Art Spiegelman, whose art is always
somewhat symbolic in the ways it deals with literal stuff.  (His
novel-in-comics Maus told the story of his father's time in the Nazi
concentration camps, with Jews drawn as mice, Germans as cats, poles as pigs,
etc -- very powerful but obviously a strong mixture of symbol, polemic, etc
-- not something you can just pin down and say, "here's what it means, and
it's either right or wrong.")   He once did a Valentine's day cover for them
that showed a (male) hasid and a (male) african american locked in passionate
kiss; is that pro- or anti- Jewish, black, gay?   I am sure I couldn't say,
even though I know many people hated it on EACH of these grounds, pro and
con!   I think it's just about provocation, more than about representation.

In this case too it seems to me that the artist's main message is about
maternal tenderness on the one hand and woman's immersion in the real world
on the other and how there is a tension between those but how they
necessarily co-exist.   The mother and baby are drawn in very appealing ways,
but it is also clear that the baby doesn't literally "belong" up on the
I-beam.  So I think it's about how things fit together in society, rather
than being a specific pro- or ant-bf statement at all in such a reductive way.

Notwithstanding which, naturally it will get read much more that way if you
have a bf caption on it as a poster...

Kathy, this is partly meant as an oblique thought on your question of whether
he "meant it to be pro or anti bf" - I think that for him that wasn't really
the question he was addressing so specificially.   But for what it is worth,
I do believe that I have heard that Francoise Spiegelman bf their kid (kids?)
for what some report, at least, thought was quite a while.   So I doubt he
meant it as a slam, even if he lacked the level of enthusiasm your or I might
go for...


Elisheva Urbas
often appalled by Art Spiegelman's work but seldom bored

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