An exhibit of prints by Jack Marshall

Introduction.

“There is a goddess in every woman, but in every woman the goddess is different.”

1.

Traditional Western Art (1300-1850 C.E.) links with a story—often a Bible story, a myth of the Greeks or Romans, stories of historical events. The link between visual art and stories dwindled considerably after the advent of the Modern Art movements (1850-1980). Style often dominated substance as Modern artists explored different ways to create. Many artists tried to express feelings, dreams, or abstract truths rather than stories. Styles changed almost every decade from indistinct impressions, to slash and dab, to surreal, to primitive, to abstract, to pop. But there was a modern story after all. The progression of art styles and the clustering of certain artists into particular movements became “The Story of Modern Art.”

Like traditional art, my art links with stories to give viewers a context and a key to interpreting the works. The premise: To see the art, know the story.

The artworks in this exhibit explore the theme: Encounters with Goddesses. The thesis: There is a goddess in every woman, but in every woman the goddess is different. Chapters 1-3 concern ancient goddesses from the prehistoric Willendorf Venus to Greco-Roman goddesses. As a child, I learned to draw from comic books, so many of my experiences with goddesses are rendered in a comic-book style: for example, the Jungle Queen, the Texas Woman, and the Muse. Influenced by Pop Art, I depict some goddesses in the style of advertisements and pinups. Judeo-Christian stories about the Garden of Eden and Mary the Queen of heaven are also depicted in my art.

This is an exhibit of prints made on a computer. Some feel that a painted canvas is superior to a print. But art prints have a long tradition. The Japanese have been making prints for centuries. Toulouse Lautrec prints appear in many books on Modern Art. In 2022, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts featured an exhibit of M.C. Escher prints and in 2023 prints by William Kentridge. In 2022 Andy Warhol’s 1964 silkscreen print of Marilyn Monroe sold for $195 million. Since many viewers are more impressed by sale price than by the content of the picture, $195 million is pretty convincing—right?

This is the Computer Age. I show some examples of how I make art using a computer. With so much confusion about Artificial Intelligence in the news, some may think that the computer makes art. For me, this is not the case. The computer is a tool, like a brush is a tool. Whatever the capabilities of A.I. in the future, at present, computers do not make very good art.

Most of the pictures in this exhibit can provide a bit of amusement to a viewer strolling through the museum. But my feeling is that art needs a story, and the stories in the following chapters on this website serve, I hope, to expand appreciation and understanding.

This website is a part of the exhibit.

2.

Website Chapters in brief

#1. God’s a Gal

Sculpted over 25,000 years ago, the Willendorf Venus is one of the earliest works of art . Created by a culture of hunters and gatherers, Willendorf is one of a small number of stone goddesses from that time that still exist. She represents a fertility goddess who protected women, especially during childbirth. Male statues from this time are few to nonexistent.

#2. Ancient Goddesses

The Snake Goddess of Crete was the protector and symbol of power for the matriarchal culture of Crete between 3000 B.C.E. and 1450 B.C.E. Cycladic Goddesses, sculpted three to four thousand years ago on the Cycladic Islands near Greece were probably, like Willendorf, fertility goddesses who protected mothers and children. Another ancient goddess image is the Great Goddess, a drawing of a predynastic sculpture in the British Museum.

#3. When I was in high school, the Readers' Digest arrived in the mail with a reproduction of Sandro Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus on the cover. I made a pencil sketch of this Venus, my first attempt to draw a goddess.

#4. Eve

In her book, When God Was a Woman, Merlin Stone contends that Levites created the biblical myth of Eve in Eden to debunk the myths of the ancient Goddess whom, according to the Bible, many Hebrew women continued to worship. Apparently, the Levites felt that if large numbers of women worshipped the Goddess, they threatened the patriarchal power structure. By casting Eve as a temptress and violator of God's command, the Levites hoped to discredit the Goddess.

#5. Beauty’s Beast.

My first wife Kingsley was often afflicted by depressions which I did not understand. With the beauty-beast folktale in mind, I made her portrait evolve into an abstraction which symbolized Depression as the Beauty’s Beast.

#6. In Memoriam

Florence was the first woman I ever fell in love with, but our relationship didn’t flower. After Florence died of breast cancer in 2005, I created a memorial portrait which evolves into an abstraction. I wanted to symbolize a spiritual transformation, but I feel my attempt fell short.

#7. Siren Song

Dumped by Kingsley, rejected by Florence, I told myself to forget about women and focus on work, sports, and art. But an irrational compulsion, the call of the Sirens, forced me to keep seeking another woman.

#8. The Muse

According to Greek myth, a Muse bestows inspiration on artists. Two of my portraits of the muse were done in a comic book style because as a child, I had learned to draw by studying comic books. In the 1960s, Pop Artists Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein created comic-book inspired art which validated art in comic-book style.

#9. Jungle Queen

Sheena, goddess of the jungle, one of my favorite comic book heroines, inspired this picture. The Jungle Queen also reminded me of Margaret Philomena Cunningham, a damsel I had dated who was elusive as Sheena.

#10. Circe

Most women I dated would not pose for me, but Rita was an exception. Her best pose was as “Circe,” a goddess encountered by Odysseus in The Odyssey. This Goddess turned Odysseus’s men into pigs.

#11. Texas Woman

Even after I reached adulthood, I wanted to be a Cowboy hero rescuing a distressed damsel. At age twenty-seven, I met Estelle Manning, age eighty-seven, a bit elderly for a damsel but definitely in need of assistance. I jumped at the chance to play the hero. However, the stubborn old lady didn’t want rescue. She wanted power, youth, and mobility—and all I had to offer was help with grocery shopping. “Texas Woman” is a portrait of Estelle Manning, not of her physical likeness, but of her desire for power and independence.

12. Feminist?

Back in 1970, many women I knew began to call themselves “Feminists.” I dated several who wanted to break from the traditional cultural mold, to have a career, and to avoid motherhood. One of my feminist portraits was “Queen of the Night.” She sits on her throne surrounded by the conflicting voices in her subconscious shouting and struggling for dominance. To balance the somber mood of “Queen of the Night,” I created “Dark Angel,” a triumphant feminist lifting a symbol of the world.

13. The Judgment of Paris

Paris was chosen to judge three goddesses in a beauty contest and present the winner with a golden apple. Devious and scheming like all goddesses, each of the three secretly intercepted Paris as he strolled in the woods and offered a bribe. Athena offered wisdom, Juno offered power, and Aphrodite offered the most beautiful woman in the world. Paris awarded the apple to Aphrodite who gifted him with Helen, a queen of unsurpassed beauty. However, there was a catch. Helen was already married—to Menelaus, the brother of Agamemnon, the most powerful king of the Greeks. When Paris abducted Helen, the Greeks declared war, destroyed the city of Troy, killed Paris and his family, and carried Helen back to Greece. Beware gifts from the goddess!

14. My Refrigerator Goddess

In the Middle Ages in Europe, Mary the mother of Jesus attained the status of a goddess among devout women who participated in a Mary Cult, even though the status of goddess was not theologically accepted by the clergy. In Mexico City in 1973, I purchased a poster of Carlo Crivelli’s “Madonna and Child.” Eventually the poster began to deteriorate, so I scanned it, then made the Madonna evolve into an abstraction: “The Rose of Heaven.”

#15. Kitchen Goddess

In a Life magazine from the 1960s, I found an ad for Bell Telephone (the only phone company back then) that featured the image of an ideal housewife. After altering the color of the original photo, I made her evolve. On the final abstraction I placed a symbol of the prehistoric Goddess from the Cyclades Islands. I dedicated “Kitchen Goddess” to my mother who, like most married women in the 1950s and 1960s, was a housewife.

#16. The Prom Queen Evolves

a. The prom photo was one of many that I transformed into an abstraction. Since 2010 I have been doing most of my art on the computer, changing photos into abstractions on which I superimpose other images.

b. For me, the computer is a tool like the brush is a tool, a machine that I use to make art. The machine is not the creator. To illustrate the process, I made a print showing variations of “Drops.” I scanned my ink sketch into a computer then traced it and colored it. Using computer tools, I altered the appearance and placed cartoon figures on two of the variations and silhouettes of a Beauty and a Beast on the last.

c. I transformed a 1960 calendar girl, a Pop Art image, into an Abstract Expressionist swirl of color. My intent was to make a secular pinup evolve into a spiritual essence. But was my transformation spiritual or just a colorful shape?

17. Coffee Goddess

Ana and I married in 1997, and that same year, I snapped the photo of her in a coffee shop in Rome. In the print, her photo is surrounded by images of prehistoric goddesses.

3.

The following chapters on this website, 1-17, tell the stories of the art in this exhibit in greater detail.