The Four Ages of Woman

About

The Four Ages of Woman at Bethlem Museum of the Mind presents extraordinarily diverse representations of women’s mental health and life experiences across childhood, youth, middle age and old age. The exhibition includes over thirty works by nineteen artists including Madge Gill, Anna Kavan, Bibi Herrera, Imma Maddox and Cynthia Pell, selected from the Museum’s extensive collection, and key works on loan.

The Four Ages of Woman is punctuated by a series of illustrations of women suffering and recovering from mental illness at different life stages, commissioned by the Victorian physician Sir Alexander Morison. Appointed to Bethlem Royal Hospital in 1835, Morison believed that it was possible to diagnose mental illness by reference to facial features, expressions and body language, which he organised into four broad categories: Mania, Monomania, Dementia and Idiocy. Contemporary versions of Morison’s male gaze are represented in works by Stanley Lench (1934-2000), including Marlene Dietrich with Skull (1975), which scrutinize the psychological pressure on women to retain their youth; and in an installation of popular women’s magazines promoting ways of achieving perfection in various spheres of life.

Most of the works in The Four Ages of Woman run counter to these reductionist perspectives, and are the product of the creative vision of female artists whose wellbeing has been severely affected by adverse life experiences.  The work of Marion Patrick (1940-1993) explores the extremes of emotion experienced by children through the prism of her own mental health, and the stark images of Maureen Scott (b.1940) mediate the resilience of motherhood within the constraints of modern peri-natal care. The acutely observed drawings of life in a large psychiatric institution by Cynthia Pell (1933-1977) derive from her personal experience of mental ill health and hospitalization, as do the paintings of Charlotte Johnson (b.1942), which reference her experiences of hospitalization and being away from her children. Poet-potter Bibi Herrera (b.1956) creates ceramic works and poems in response to her experience of torture under General Pinochet’s regime in Chile, and subsequent mental ill-health.

At Bethlem Gallery - located in the same building as the Museum - contemporary artists Esther Maxwell-Orumbie and Sarah Carpenter have been working with service users and staff of the Mother and Baby Unit at Bethlem Royal Hospital on Transitions, an exhibition looking at identity and the everyday, framed by the complex challenges experienced during the transition to motherhood. The have created lino and mono prints, textile works, and writings inspired by the ordinary artefacts and occupations of individuals’ past and present lives.

Artists presenting in The Four Ages of Woman: Linda Bamford, Stephanie Bates, Lisa Biles, Madge Gill, Bibi Herrera, Charlotte Johnson, Anna Kavan, Stanley Lench, Esther Maxwell-Orumbie, Imma Maddox, Marion Patrick, Cynthia Pell, Maureen Scott, Charles Sims, Patricia Smith, S.P. Subbauucher and Elise Warriner Pacquette.