Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 5:30 PM

What's Love Got To Do With It?

Fertilization Imagery in the Art of Gustav Klimt,

Frida Kahlo, and Diego Rivera

An Illustrated Lecture by

Dr. Scott Gilbert, Swarthmore College

How does an artist paint love? Many people use hearts and flowers, but a few unconventional artists depicted cells and embryos. Dr. Gilbert will examine the artistic work of Gustav Klimt, Frida Kahlo, and Diego Rivera, each of whom used the language of modern science to speak about love, politics, and society. Klimt depicted nascent embryos to champion artistic creativity over government repression; Kahlo used embryonic development to symbolize the consummation of love and the primacy of woman in creation; and Rivera used an image of ovulation to portray workers controlling their fertility and wages.

Dr. Scott Gilbert is the Howard A. Schneiderman Professor of Biology at Swarthmore College and is a Finland Distinguished Professor at the University of Helsinki. He teaches developmental genetics, embryology, and the history and critiques of biology.  His award-winning research looks at the ways in which evolution is a product of embryological changes.  Dr. Gilbert’s work has been published extensively in academic journals and he is the author of three textbooks.

Image Credits:

Photographs, left to right:

Gustav Klimt, photograph by Josef Trcka, 1914.

Frida Kahlo, photograph by Carl Van Vechten, 1932.

Diego Rivera, photograph by Carl Van Vechten, 1932.

Painting Details, left to right:

Gustav Klimt, Danae, oil on canvas, 77x83 cm, 1907. Private collection.

Frida Kahlo, Moses (The Nucleus of Creation), oil on masonite, 61x75.6 cm, 1945.

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