{"id":409,"date":"2008-01-26T13:29:34","date_gmt":"2008-01-26T13:29:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2008\/01\/womb-with-a-view.html"},"modified":"2008-01-26T13:29:34","modified_gmt":"2008-01-26T13:29:34","slug":"womb-with-a-view","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/01\/womb-with-a-view.html","title":{"rendered":"Womb with a view"},"content":{"rendered":"

An art exhibit in London:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Marc Quinn last amazed the public by placing a giant pregnant disabled woman on the Fourth Plinth of Trafalgar Square.<\/p>\n

Now he is looking at pregnancy from the inside with nine large sculptures depicting the development of a foetus from 22 days to just before birth.
\nThey have been carved in a pink marble whose mottling conveys the fine veins below the growing child’s skin. They go on display at the White Cube Mason’s Yard gallery, St James’s, tomorrow in Quinn’s first exhibition in the capital since 2005. <\/a>
\nQuinn was inspired partly by Slaves, sculptures by the Renaissance master Michelangelo,<\/a> in which bodies almost fight their way out of rough-hewn rock.
\nBut the five-ton sculptures, made of marble quarried from the Spanish-Portuguese border, were also prompted by witnessing the way viewers reacted with repulsion to Alison Lapper, the Trafalgar Square model, and to his series of figurative sculptures depicting people missing arms and legs.
\nYet everyone had once been a foetus just like these curious-looking embryos, he said, as he put the finishing touches to the show.
\n“This one looks like an alien in films. Some are distinctively extraterrestrial. But it’s universal because every single person has come from this.” He said the pieces flagged up ” our relationship to our body and what is normal, beautiful or different”.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/div>\n

There is an audio interview and a visit to the exhibition here, in the latest episode of the BBC4’s “Front Row” weekly wrapup podcast – it’s the second segment.<\/a> Quinn energetically disavows any political motivations, reiterating what he says in the newspaper piece above, about his interest in life, particularly how life develops.
\nThe piece at Trafalger Square was also intriguing and controversial to some – a giganatic statue of pregnant fellow-artist Alison Lapper, born with a condition called phocomelia which left her with no arms and underdeveloped legs.\u00a0 a\u00a0statue called, \u00a0well, “Alison Lapper Pregnant<\/a>.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An art exhibit in London: Marc Quinn last amazed the public by placing a giant pregnant disabled woman on the Fourth Plinth of Trafalgar Square. Now he is looking at pregnancy from the inside with nine large sculptures depicting the development of a foetus from 22 days to just before birth. They have been carved…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nWomb with a view - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/01\/womb-with-a-view.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Womb with a view - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"An art exhibit in London: Marc Quinn last amazed the public by placing a giant pregnant disabled woman on the Fourth Plinth of Trafalgar Square. Now he is looking at pregnancy from the inside with nine large sculptures depicting the development of a foetus from 22 days to just before birth. They have been carved…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/01\/womb-with-a-view.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-01-26T13:29:34+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/i.thisislondon.co.uk\/i\/pix\/2008\/01\/03_baby79monthES_415x275.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Womb with a view - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/01\/womb-with-a-view.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Womb with a view - Via Media","og_description":"An art exhibit in London: Marc Quinn last amazed the public by placing a giant pregnant disabled woman on the Fourth Plinth of Trafalgar Square. Now he is looking at pregnancy from the inside with nine large sculptures depicting the development of a foetus from 22 days to just before birth. They have been carved…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/01\/womb-with-a-view.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2008-01-26T13:29:34+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/i.thisislondon.co.uk\/i\/pix\/2008\/01\/03_baby79monthES_415x275.jpg"}],"author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/01\/womb-with-a-view.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/01\/womb-with-a-view.html","name":"Womb with a view - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/01\/womb-with-a-view.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/01\/womb-with-a-view.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/i.thisislondon.co.uk\/i\/pix\/2008\/01\/03_baby79monthES_415x275.jpg","datePublished":"2008-01-26T13:29:34+00:00","dateModified":"2008-01-26T13:29:34+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/01\/womb-with-a-view.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/01\/womb-with-a-view.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/01\/womb-with-a-view.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/i.thisislondon.co.uk\/i\/pix\/2008\/01\/03_baby79monthES_415x275.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/i.thisislondon.co.uk\/i\/pix\/2008\/01\/03_baby79monthES_415x275.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/01\/womb-with-a-view.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Womb with a view"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}