ABSTRACT
The topics of gestating and being born, as well as those of being pregnant and giving birth, involve complex queries that branch into all areas of philosophy. Yet while canonical philosophers have historically focused on universals in the human experience, including the universal of death, they have given much less attention to birth. Jonathan Waller, a contemporary British artist, created just such realistic images, which were shown very briefly in his exhibition, Birth, at the Flowers East gallery in 1997 in London. The situation of how childbirth is represented in art has changed since the turn of the century, however, as a contemporary art movement devoted to images of birth has developed rapidly in the United States and abroad. This chapter explores the presence of religious, secular, and re-sacralized art imagery both in the visualization of labour and birth, and as a ritualistic part of birth as a rite of passage.
