argues that Sheela na gigs,
which have traditionally been
viewed as medieval warnings
against lust, can also be
understood as celebrations of
female fertility. Which strikes
me as a clear case of wishful
thinking. Surely celebrations
of fertility would have a more
positive presence than these
scowling, hunched-up
stone munchkins?
The desire section deals
with feminine sexual power
and the role played by females
in the “downfall of man”.
A tiny Roman cameo from
about 200BC is said to be the
oldest known representation
of Adam and Eve being
tempted by the snake. A
nearby Roman Venus covering
her sexual parts, in the pose
known traditionally as the
Venus pudica, may in fact be
seeking to draw attention to
them, explains one of the
show’s determinedly
revisionist captions.
It’s a cue for Beard to roar
back on to the battlefield and
draw our attention to Kiki
Smith’s 1994 sculpture of
Lilith, Adam’s first wife, who
is shown naked and clinging
to a wall in an upside-down
position that obscures her
private parts. “This is an
image about transgression,
about a woman putting two
fingers up to male power,”
Beard belts out, a tad naively.
Trust me, Mary, somewhere
in the world of masculine
perversion there will be a
dirty corner filled with blokes
who dream of naked women
hanging upside down in the
Spider-Man pose.
Too much of the determined
revisionism being unleashed
here feels more like projection
than scholarship. The often
tortuous attempts to thrust
feminist readings on to unruly
ancient art makes this show
feel shrill and preachy. Thank
heavens it’s accompanied by
an excellent catalogue that
fills in most of the gaps.
At Hauser & Wirth, the
Venezuelan artist Luchita
Hurtado (1920-2020) rights
some of these wrongs with
a beautiful collection of
paintings made after she
moved to New Mexico and
encountered the rituals and
beliefs of the area’s Native
Americans. Having trained as
a surrealist in Mexico City,
Hurtado was instinctively
drawn to ideas of magic and
transformation. What I like
about her work, though, is its
refusal to resort to any of the
usual surrealist clichés — no
chessboards, no women
turning into cats. Instead
she invents a new vein of
surrealist imagery.
The show concentrates on
a series called the Sky Skins in
which Hurtado seems to be
looking up at the bright blue
New Mexico sky through a
sequence of holes in the rock.Walk the walk A sculpture
of the goddess Kali by
Kaushik Ghosh, 2021
The colour and light of the
New Mexican landscape is
immediately recognisable. But
the evocative objects floating
in these vivid blue heavens
— feathers, butterflies — relateto Native American rituals
whose mystery is uncrushable.
Hurtado described her
upward views as things the
dead might see through a hole
in the coffin while lying
underground. There’s a
powerful darkness lurking
beneath these pretty skies. cFeminine Power: The Divine
to the Demonic is at the British
Museum until Sep 25.
Luchita Hurtado is at Hauser &
Wirth, London W1, until Jul 30Talk the talk Mary Beard,
Bonnie Greer and Elizabeth
Day provide nonstop
commentary on the artTHE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM22 May 2022 17