Mother and Child

One Book One Northwestern, 2023–24

Maurice Denis’s dreamy lithograph features a mother and child who seem to emerge as a hazy memory in an outdoor landscape. Around the time Denis completed this lithograph, he made many artworks with the theme of mother and child in paintings and prints. While the subject has a universal readability, it also suggests Denis’s personal situation. He had married in 1893 at the age of 23 and eventually became a father to seven children with his first wife Marthe. This personal, domestic subject matter reflects Denis’s own experience as the father of a young family. Denis was also especially interested in a sacred, specifically Christian, art and recasting the contemporary world in a spiritual light. Part of a group of artists interested in symbolism who called themselves Les Nabis (a French name coined from a Hebrew word for "prophets"), Denis was interested in exploring the threshold between the secular and the spiritual. In his artwork, he often sought the divine within the domestic sphere.

Crying in H Mart is at its heart a story of a mother and child. With sacred overtones and clear references to traditional Western painting, Denis’s image of a mother with her baby draws on a tradition established in the history of art. The haziness and idealism of the image suggest a memory, focusing on the tenderness between mother and child and leaving out some of the more complicated emotions Zauner brings to light in their relationship.