Volcanic vulvas and hermaphrodite marble: Ovid’s Metamorphoses reshaped at the Rijksmuseum
Artists from Bernini to Louise Bourgeois are brought together in a new exhibition exploring the uncomfortable erotic parables of the ancient Roman poetOn three massive screens in a darkened room, snakes glide over the face of artist Juul Kraijer – covering her eyes, caressing her lips.She is the silent but terrifying snake-headed Medusa, and one of the surprises in an exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam revolving around Greek and Roman myths.While the show features rarely lent works from masters such as Caravaggio, Bernini, Rodin and Brâncuși, it marries them with modern artists who reinterpret the legends where male gods do all they can to get their wicked way and the powerless are punished.Transgender bodies, bare breasts and even a volcanic vulva appear in artworks inspired by Roman poet Ovid’s masterpiece, Metamorphoses.Taco Dibbits, general director of the Rijksmuseum, believes the 200 myths and legends from this ancient epic poem still speak to our uncertain times.
“The Metamorphoses have inspired artists for over 2,000 years and the subject is very relevant today, when everything is changing,” he says.“Things are morphed into other forms.People morph into other people.It’s about the force of nature and giving an explanation to our passions, to our sadness, to our fears.That’s what makes it so intensely human.
”The show features plaster models by Auguste Rodin, with figures emerging from crude rock like the female sculpture created by Pygmalion in Ovid’s legend, who comes to life,There is a room inspired by Leda and the Swan, with Zeus “seducing” the Spartan queen by taking the bird’s form,It also includes a rare loan from the Louvre,Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s 17th-century carving of Sleeping Hermaphroditus – which sets an ancient Roman sculpture of a hermaphrodite with male and female sexual organs on a lifelike marble mattress – was inspired by Ovid’s story of a couple’s bodies merging in sexual union,There are some uncomfortable outcomes for women in the tales.
Jupiter assumes the form of a cloud or shower of gold to impregnate his female target,As one explanatory board admits: “His loves are rarely tender – more often coercive and one-sided,”Modern artists, particularly women, give another point of view: South African sculptor Nandipha Mntambo’s 2009 bronze of Jupiter as a bull is cast into a powerful, female form,The story of Arachne, who challenged the goddess Minerva to a weaving contest and was eventually transformed into a spider, becomes a massive bronze spider statue created by the late French-American artist Louise Bourgeois,A room about chaos and creation features Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta’s Birth (Gunpowder Works).
It depicts a female body made from earth and water, with what the gallery describes as a large “vulva-like form containing smouldering ash”.Frits Scholten, senior curator of sculpture, says there is a level of modern discomfort with the sexualisation of rape in some of Ovid’s stories and the art they inspired.“All these early stories in Ovid were reinterpreted by each generation and our generation looks at them in a different way,” he says.“We do address the fact that it’s often not very friendly to women.“At the same time, we say that you have to be nuanced in your view: these were scenes from fantasy, from ancient fairy tales, and they were often symbolic.
I’m not saying that they are OK, but they exist, they are part of our culture and part of our history.”Scholten points to a copy of a painting of Leda and the Swan, once created by the Italian Renaissance master Michelangelo.“That’s a bedchamber piece,” he said.“You can be fairly sure that it hung over a bed in a palace in Italy.The original one by Michelangelo went to France and was destroyed by the French queen – she didn’t like it.
So it is about power.”In celebrating these stories of change and transformation, Dibbits says the exhibition is ultimately about hope.“It gives a form to our fears, to the violence change often brings forth, but also the softness and the sweetness of it,” he says.“Everything undergoes a metamorphosis but the soul stays.That’s the hope: we haven’t lost our souls.
” Metamorphoses is at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, from 6 February to 25 May
Rich plums and ripe tomatoes: Australia’s best-value fruit and veg for February
Tomatoes ripe for cooking, cheap watermelon and cucumbers for $2 a piece – but it’s the final call for apricots, cherries and mangoesGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailJuicy watermelon, deep-purple plums and ripe roma tomatoes are some of the vibrant fruit and veg highlights this month, says Graham Gee, senior buyer at the Happy Apple in Melbourne.“Tomatoes are plentiful, in particular the saucing varieties,” he says. “Roma varieties are sold nice and ripe, ready to make passata.” Cooking tomatoes are roughly $2 a kilo at the Happy Apple, with Australian field tomatoes going for about $5 a kilo in supermarkets.Watermelon is “very cheap”, says Michael Hsu, operational manager at Sydney’s Panetta Mercato
How to make moreish cookies from store-cupboard odds and ends – recipe | Waste not
I often eat a bag of salty crisps at the same time as a chewy chocolate bar, alternating bite for bite between the two, because the extreme contrast of salt from the chips and the sweetness of the chocolate fire off each other and create an endorphin rush. The same goes for these cookies, adapted from a recipe by Christina Tosi at New York’s legendary Milk Bar.Christina Tosi writes in Gourmet Traveller Australia how she first learned to make these cookies at a conference centre on Star Island, New England, where they’d bake them each week with a hodge-podge of different ingredients. Being on an island, they didn’t always have access to what they wanted, so they had to come up with a new recipe every week using whatever they had. In the spirit of the recipe’s origins, I’ve adapted Tosi’s recipe for the UK, and made it flexible, so you can raid your own store-cupboards and adapt and invent your own version from it
Camilla Wynne’s recipes for blood orange marmalade and no-bake marmalade mousse tart
If you’re intimidated by making marmalade, the whole-fruit method is the perfect entry point. Blood oranges are simmered whole until soft, perfuming your home as they do so, then they’re sliced, skin and all, mixed with sugar and a fragrant cinnamon stick, and embellished with a shot of amaro. Squirrel the jars away for a grey morning, give a few to deserving friends, and be sure to keep at least one to make this elegant mocha marmalade mousse tart. A cocoa biscuit crust topped with a chocolate marmalade mousse and crowned with a cold brew coffee cream, it’s a delightful trifecta of bitterness that no one will ever guess is an easy no-bake dessert.If you’re not up for preserving, make this using shop-bought thick-cut marmalade
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Australian supermarket coconut water taste test: ‘Smells like an island holiday’
Overcoming his irrational fear of coconut products, Nicholas Jordan tests a lovely – and lowly – bunch of coconuts in a rowIf you value our independent journalism, we hope you’ll consider supporting us todayGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailI have a fear of coconut products. Like all fears it’s based on a questionable rationale and trauma, and my trauma is taste testing “health” coconut-heavy products that taste like soap. Which is why, until recently, almost all the coconut water I’d drunk was from a straw reaching out of a fresh coconut.Surely there’s no way a bottled coconut water, made from 100% coconut, could be that bad. Maybe it could be better than the real thing? I enjoy Melona more than the average honeydew melon
Miso mystery: red, white or yellow – how does each paste change your dish? | Kitchen aide
What’s the difference between white and red miso, and which should I use for what? Why do some recipes not specify which miso to use? Ben, by email“I think what recipe writers assume – and I’m sure I’ve written recipes like this – is that either way, you’re not going to get a miso that’s very extreme,” says Tim Anderson, whose latest book, JapanEasy Kitchen: Simple Recipes Using Japanese Pantry Ingredients, is out in April. As Ben points out, the two broadest categories are red and white, and in a lot of situations “you can use one or other to your taste without it having a massive effect on the outcome of the dish”.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more
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