Test tubes and transgender parents — art shreds the nuclear family
Our critic expected a warm gooey update on how artists represent the family at the Fitzwilliam Museum — but instead found another skirmish in the culture wars
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Narrated by Waldemar Januszczak
I blundered into Real Families at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge expecting something warm and gooey. I emerged feeling slapped about and challenged. On the surface, it’s an examination of the way artists have represented the family in their work. Under the surface, it’s another skirmish in the culture wars.
I was expecting something gooey because I’ve been making a TV series about mannerism, the elusive art movement that sprang up in Europe around 1520 and sizzled away interestingly until around 1600. Squeezed between the Renaissance and the baroque age, mannerism gave us much that was new. In particular, it gave us women artists.
Properzia de’ Rossi, Lavinia Fontana, Catharina van Hemessen and Sofonisba Anguissola all emerged in the mannerist epoch. They were new voices
